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If you share your computer, allow others to use it, or if you are a network administrator, you may not want people to use removable media. Removable media can carry harmful software that can be transferred to your computer in a matter of seconds. In this guide you’ll learn how to disable access to removable media in Windows Vista.

Please Note: This guide involves the use of the Group Policy Editor, which is not included with Vista Home Premium/Basic or Windows XP Home. If this is the first time you are using the Group Policy Editor, read this guide.

Unfortunately I do not know how to do this tweak using only the registry. If you know how, please contact me.

• Start Group Policy Editor (Start > Run > “gpedit.msc”)
• In the left panel, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Removable Storage Access
• In the right panel, enable All Removable Storage class: Deny all access

If you wish to apply the changed policy setting immediately, open a command prompt and run gpupdate/force