How to Enable / Disable Regedit in Windows 7

Want to learn how to enable / disable the registry editor? Well, you are at the right place, have a glance at this article to find out how to enable / disable Regedit in Windows 7.

The reason behind enabling the registry editor is to edit it any time if a need arises. But you may be aware that the registry is prone to risk, if it is caught by the Viruses or Trojans. Sometimes you need to disable the registry, so that no user can edit the registry settings in your system without logging in as an administrator.

Steps to Enable/Disable Regedit in Windows 7

Method 1 of 1:

Using the “Prevent access to registry” editing tool:

Step 1: Make sure that you are logged in as an Administrator. Click on “Windows” button, then type “gpedit.msc” on the search bar, the gpedit.msc program appears click on it.

Step 2: Local Group Policy editor will appear, click on “User Configuration” and go to the “Administrative Templates”.

Step 3: Once you click on “Administrative Templates”, on the right side,  you”ll see various options click on “System”.

Step 4: Now you are on “System” panel. Scroll down and look for the “Prevent access to registry editing tools”, double click on it to open it.

Step 5: You will be able to enable / disable the registry editor.

In this step, I will show you how to “Enable” the registry editor. For this you need to click on “Disabled” to disable the prevent access to the registry, so that you”ll be able to access the registry editor.

Click on “Apply” button to effectively make the changes.

Step 6: Let’s talk about disabling the registry editor. To disable the registry editor, so that the guest user could not be able to perform any sort of activity in the registry editor, click on “Enabled” to enable the prevent access registry editor tool.

Under options you can choose “Yes / No” to set disable Regedit from running silently which means merging registry file without any notification. It’s clearly up to you to select “yes/no”.

Then click on “Apply” to make the changes.

Method 2 of 2:

Using Command Prompt:

Step 1: Login as an administrator , go to “Start” button and search for “cmd”, then you may see “cmd.exe” program, right click on it and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2: Command Prompt window will open on your screen. To “Enable” the registry editor, copy the command: “REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0” and paste it in the command prompt window.

Step 3: If you need to “Disable” the registry editor, then copy the command: “REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 1” and paste it over the cmd.exe and press enter.

Step 4: I have recently enabled the registry editor, so I got the message “Value DisableRegistryTools exists, overwite<Yes/No>”, I have typed “Yes” to disable the registry editor as shown in the figure below.

NOTE:

You may be required to restart your computer after enabling / disabling the registry editor.
One more important thing is that you can follow these steps in Windows XP and Windows Vista.