In this day and age, protecting your data has become a very challenging task. No matter how careful you are with your data privacy, there’s always a chance that someone might steal your data from your PC without you knowing about it. Besides your data getting stolen, there are chances of your PC getting infected with malicious threats if some unknown device is inserted through your USB ports.
This issue is more prominent if you are running an institute where you’ve lots of computers to protect. Some students or employees might infect your computers knowingly or unknowingly. So disabling your Computer’s USB port is a convenient solution for all these problems. So, in this article, we will discuss various methods of how to disable USB port in windows 10.
Requirements to disable USB port in Windows 10
- You should have the administrator’s right to disable the USB port on any computer.
That’s it; you just need to have the above-mentioned requirement.
How to disable USB port in Windows 10?
There are several methods you can use to disable your PC’s USB ports on your windows machine. You can disable all the USB ports or disable a single port that you do not use often. Let us Discuss how to disable USB port in windows 10 using the below-mentioned methods-
Method 1: How to disable USB port in windows 10 using Device Manager?
Out of all the methods we are going to discuss, this is the easiest method to disable a USB port-
- Step 1: Right-click on the start menu and select Device Manager
- Step 2: On the device manager window, scroll to the bottom of the list to find the Universal Serial Bus controller option. Click on it to expand the list of USB ports you have on your PC.
- Step 3: Right-click on the USB Port that you want to disable and select Disable device. Alternatively, you can choose The Uninstall device option, but you have to find the drivers and reinstall them if you ever want to use the port again.
NOTE: You’ll find the option to Disable the device only if the port is currently not in use.
As you can see, it requires only 3 simple steps to disable your USB ports using the Device Manager tool. But one of the cons of using this method is that someone with a piece of basic computer knowledge can figure this out and enable it easily by following these steps. That is why we are going to discuss another method to ensure a tight blockade.
Method 2: How to disable USB port in windows 10 using Registry Editor?
The second method that we are going to discuss involves altering your registry values using the registry editor tool. So let’s start-
- Step 1: From the start menu, type Run and open the Run command box or use the shortcut key combination Windows+R. Now type Regedit in the run command box to open the Registry Editor.
Regedit
- Step 2: On the registry editor, navigate the following path
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
- Step 3: After navigating to the USBSTOR page, find the Start button and double click on it.
- Step 4: Now, in the Value data box, change the value from 3 to 4. That’s it, now restart your PC. Your USB ports should be disabled. To re-enable the ports, revert to the original values, which is 3.
Method 3: How to disable USB port in windows 10 using Local Group Policy Editor?
The 3rd method that we are going to discuss is by far the most complex one yet. But don’t worry, we will make it very simple. All you need to do is follow the below-mentioned steps carefully-
NOTE: If you are using the Home edition of Windows 10, you’ll have trouble using this method because you may not find the Local Group Policy Editor tool on Windows 10 home. To Enable Local Group Policy Editor tool on windows 10 home, read our article – How to enable gpedit.msc in Windows 10 Home
- Step 1: Open the Run command box from the Start menu or use Windows+R and type gpedit.msc and hit enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor tool.
gpedit.msc
- Step 2: Now, from the Local Group Policy Editor tool, navigate the following path –
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Removable Storage Access
- Step 3: On opening Removable Storage Access, you’ll get some new options in the right-hand side panel. Namely 1. Removable Disks: Deny read access and 2. Removable Disks: Deny write access.
- Step 4: On double-clicking each option, you’ll get another window to configure them. Here you’ll find 3 options on the top left corner; Not Configured, Enabled, and Disabled. Click on the Enabled option and click Apply to disable your USB port’s read and write access. To re-enable your USB ports, revert to the Not Configured or Disabled Option.
So this wraps up our today’s article on how to disable USB port in Windows 10. If you have any doubts or queries, feel free to write them down in the comment section.
