How to Prevent Access to Registry Editor in Windows 10
Registry Editor is an essential tool for system administrators, geeks and regular users who want to change the Windows operating system’s hidden settings which are not available via its user interface. You might want to prevent users from accessing Windows Registry, and from making its modifications. In this case, you can enable a group policy.
In Windows 10, Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options for low-level operating system components, and for applications running on the platform. It consists of several files. You can see which files represent your registry database if you open the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\hivelist
The main purpose of Registry Editor is to view and change the settings in the system registry – a set of special files which contain configuration information about Windows and almost all software installed. Windows and many programs (except the ones which are “portable”) use this information to read and write their own settings to the registry.
To open the Registry editor, press Win + R on the keyboard to open the Run box . Type regedit into the Run box and press Enter. Continue with the UAC prompt if it appears.
Windows 10 allows the system administrator to protect Registry from being unauthorized accessed by both locally and remotely, and disable the Regedit tool.
To Prevent Access to Registry Editor in Windows 10,
1. Press WIN + R, type gpedit.msc, and click OK to launch Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Browse the left panel to User Configuration → Administrative Template → System
3. Double-click Prevent Access to Registry Editing Tools on the right side.
4. Click the Enable radio button, and click OK to save the settings.
Now, when a user on your PC try to open the registry editor, he will get a message telling that the registry editor tool has been disabled by an administrator.
To undo this change and to regain access to the Registry tool, repeat the same process to disable the setting.
To restrict access to Registry remotely
All you need to do on Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 computers is to make sure the Remote Registry service is disabled. As long as this service is not running, your registry can’t be access over the network.
1. Press Win + R and type services.msc in the Run field.
2. Find the service named Remote Registry.
3. Double-click the service to open it properties.
4. Set the startup type drop-down menu to Disabled.
