How to Disable or Enable USB Ports from Registry & BIOS On a Computer

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is one of the important methods to send or receive information from a computer. In order to improve the safety of information stored on a PC, it is good to disable Universal Serial Bus for unauthorized users and it is a simple task if you have admin rights. In this tutorial, I would like to share one method to disable and enable them on a PC from the registry. Since registry editing is a sensitive task, I would like you to follow the steps carefully and strongly recommend you to take a registry backup before proceeding. If you are not the only admin of your computer, I recommend you to follow the BIOS method to block Universal Serial Bus on your computer. Steps to block them from BIOS are listed at the end of this tutorial.



Steps to deactivate them on a PC from Windows registry are:

1. Click on start
2. Type regedit on Run window or Search and press enter. Now the registry editor opens
3. Navigate to the following registry path
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor
4. Click on UsbStor and a list of attributes will be displayed on the right panel
   
   
5. Double click on start and set the hexadecimal value to 4 and click OK

Now the Universal Serial Bus on your PC is disabled. If you connect any USB device, your computer will not recognize them.


To do this you need to follow the steps 1 to 4 and set 3 as the hexadecimal value for start. This will reverse the effect.


As I explained before, to block Universal Serial Bus for other admins on your PC, you must deactivate it from BIOS. Disable the USB ports from BIOS and set a password for BIOS to prevent other admins to reverse the restriction. Here I assume other admins cannot remove and replace the CMOS battery to reset BIOS password.

To block Universal Serial Bus for other users with administrative privilege follow the steps below.

1. Reboot your computer
   
   
2. Press [F2] or [Del] as told in the motherboard manual while booting your PC
   
   
3. Enter BIOS by entering BIOS password
   
   
4. Select Advanced
   
   
5. Select USB Configuration and press enter
   
   
6. Select the option to disable

To enable Universal Serial Bus on your PC you need to enter BIOS and enable the USB Ports. The steps are the same except the last step. We need to enable them from the disabled state.

The above tip completely disables Universal Serial Bus on your PC but if you want to disable only writing files to devices connected to the USB ports of your computer, follow the steps provided in the link below.
How to Disable Writing files to USB Drives Connected to Your Computer

Sometimes due to various reasons registry editor may be disabled on your laptop. In that scenario, you cannot disable Universal Serial Bus on your laptop unless you need to unlock registry editor. To perform this follow the steps provided in the link below.
How to Enable Disabled Registry Editor on Your Computer

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