How to Enable & Disable Registry Editor in Windows 10?

Have you ever enable disable registry editor in Windows? Well, a registry editor is used to set the policies of your system. Being an administrator, you can disable and enable the registry editor. In this section, we will discuss the steps to disable and enable registry editor in Windows.

1. 1. Disable Registry Editor
   2. Enable Registry Editor

Steps to Enable & Disable Registry Editor in Windows 10:

Disable Registry Editor

Step 1: Type Registry Editor in the Windows search box and click open the Registry Editor app.

Step 2: Your system will ask you for permission click on Yes to proceed.

Step 3: In the Registry Editor app window, in the navigation panel at the left click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER to expand it.

Step 4: Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, scroll down to search for Software, click on Software to proceed further.

Step 5: Under Software scroll down below to get Microsoft. Click on Microsoft.

Step 6: Next you have to search and click on Windows.

Step 7: Under Windows, you have to search and click on CurrentVersion.

Step 8: Next search for Policies and right-click on the Policies. Among the displayed options click on New>Key. This will help you to add a new policy to your system.

Step 9: Rename the added key as System.

Step 10: Now right-click on the recently added key ‘System’ and from the displayed result click on New>DWORD (32-bit) Value. By doing this you have created a variable with a doubleword data type that is specific to Microsoft Windows.

Step 11: Now you have to name the added variable I have named it DisableRegistryTools. To set the value for this variable double click on it.

Step 12: Set the value of the variable as 1 and click on OK.

To verify that you have completely disabled the Registry Editor, type registry Editor on the Windows search box and try to open it as you have done in step 1. You will get an error as you can see in the image below.

Now to re-enable the Registry Editor follow the steps discussed below.

Enable Registry Editor

Well, there are two methods to re-enable Registry Editor.

1. Using Group Policy Editor
2. Using Command Prompt

Using Group Policy Editor

Step 1: Type Run in the windows search box and In the Run window type gpedit.msc command to open the Group Policy Editor.

Step 2: In the Local Group Policy Editor window, in the navigation panel at left explore User Configuration> Administrative Templates>System.

Step 3: Now in the work area at the right, double click on ‘Prevent access to registry editing tools’.

Step 4: A window will pop up where you have to either Disable the preventing access to registry editor or just click on ‘Not Configured’. Now click on Apply and OK to save the changes.

Using Command Prompt

Step 1: Open the command prompt as an administrator and type the command given below:

reg add “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System” /t Reg_dword /v DisableRegistryTools /f /d 0

after typing this command press Enter and this will re-enable the Registry Editor.

Note: Try and restart the computer to enable the changes.

So this is how you can disable and enable registry editor for the other users of your computer.