Toggle Access to Control Panel

If you need to disable access to the Windows XP Control Panel or restore disabled Control Panel access, perform this tip.

If you are configuring a Windows XP computer for new users or for public use, you may wish to disable access to the entire Control Panel so people cannot accidentally change settings that may cause problems such as making the screen unreadable, disabling devices, and disabling security features such as the Windows Firewall.

Conversely, you may be the victim of a spyware or other malware attack, or system files may have gotten corrupted, preventing access to the Control Panel. You may not even see a Control Panel option from the "Start" menu. This Registry tweak may solve your problem. This post contain manual steps to protect your computer and remove spyware

Trying to access a Control Panel applet that has been disabled

If your system is centrally managed via Group Policy Management, this tweak may have no effect.


Editing the Windows Registry may cause damage to your machine.

Follow the Steps

1. Open the Windows Registry Editor (Click "Start" - "Run" - "regedit.exe").

2. Navigate to the following key:

My Computer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

3. To prevent Control Panel access (you will not even be able to run .CPL files manually), create a new DWORD value named NoControlPanel with a value of 1.

To re-enable Control Panel access, delete the NoControlPanel value.

Especially when re-enabling disabled Control Panel access, you may have to logoff and back on or restart the machine for the change to take effect.

4. Close the Registry Editor.