The windows registry contains all settings for Windows OS and your installed applications. By editing the registry you can: make your computer boot faster, allow computer to automatically logon to your desktop, and enable faster buffering of online media, among many others. Through your registry you can also discover if you have malware and virus on your computer. For those who install trial software, a little edit of the registry will allow the user to take advantage of the software indefinitely.
Through there are a lot of advantages in editing the registry, keep in mind that this is an integral part of Windows and can lead to computer crash if edited incorrectly. Before you do any change, make sure you backup your registry so you can restore in case you make a mistake. This way, you won’t have to reinstall your operating system but you may still loss some of your personal data in the process.
If a computer is shared by multiply people, you might want to disable the registry so as to protect the system. If you are using Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or 2008, this is now possible.
To disable the registry editor, you need to be logged in as administrator of your computer. Here are 4 ways you can disable the registry editor:
1. Disable registry access to the user currently logged on:
a. Click on start>run then type in regedit (For Vista and Win7 users, just type in regedit to the search bar on the start menu) . Hit OK.
b. Look for the following entry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
c. Right click on the empty space, choose new>key. Name it System.
d. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System choose new>DWORD Value and name this DisableRegistryTools (without spaces in between).
e. Finally, change the value data to 1 to disable the registry editor.
2. Disable access for all user accounts
Follow steps a to 3 above but replace HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies to HKEY_CURRENT_USER to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
3. Using the group editor
a. You’ll need to download this software from microsoft. There are 3 files available on this site, choose the right file depending on your operating system (2000admsetup.msi is for MS 2000, and so on).
b. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the file, you must run it. To do that go to Run and type in gpedit.msc. This should open to the local group policy editor and will allow you prevent access to the registry tools.
c. Look for User configuration>administrative templates>system.
d. Double click on the folder and a new window should appear. Choose the disabled option.
4. Through a virus
Several viruses may disable access to your registry editor. A malware known us the W32/Brontok-C is known to cause this. Unfortunately, it will also disable your access to the registry editor and the malware can cause the computer to crash. Needless to say, this last step is undesirable since you will not be able to control the spread of the malware and it will actually install new application without prompting you.
