Disabling USB ports. Disconnecting USB devices without using the Safely Remove Hardware function

You can enable USB ports on a laptop through the BIOS, Device Manager, Registry Editor, or Group Policy Editor. If access to the USB connectors was intentionally prohibited using special software, then you can unblock it in a program where the interface is blocked. All methods are available to ordinary users and do not require special training.

Disabling unnecessary devices

If the USB ports suddenly stopped working and you are now looking for how to turn them on, then the first thing to do is look to see if the device is connected to the laptop too much. When using a USB hub, the laptop may not be able to supply power to all devices, causing the USB ports to become unresponsive. Before setting up USB in the BIOS, unplug any unnecessary hardware from your laptop and check if the ports work. If nothing has changed, then reboot the laptop and go into the BIOS.

Enabling ports in BIOS

To enter the BIOS during boot, press Delete, F2 or another key depending on the motherboard model. You can view it on the start screen.

In the case of a laptop, this screen does not appear because the fast boot feature is activated. You can temporarily disable this technology in the power settings:

Restart your computer. Without Quick Start, you will see all stages of Windows boot and can get into the BIOS. If this doesn't work on Windows 8 or 10 with UEFI BIOS, try the following method:

Once rebooted, select Diagnostics, then go to Advanced Options and open UEFI Firmware Options. Click "Reboot", the next time you start, the BIOS UEFI interface will appear.

To configure USB ports in UEFI, you need to go to the “Peripherals” tab and set the “Legacy USB Support” parameter to “Enabled”. If support for USB 3.0 ports is required, activate the corresponding item (USB 3.0 Support).

In the AMI BIOS, go to the “Integrated Peripherals” section and set the four options to “Enabled”:

• USB EHCI Controller.
• USB Mouse Support.
• USB Keyboard Support.
• Legacy USB Storage Detect.

In Phoenix AwardBIOS, you need to go to the “Advanced” tab and go to the “USB configuration” section. All parameters inside must be set to “Enabled” for the USB ports to work.

In all BIOS versions, to save the configuration, you must press the F10 key and confirm the selection by writing “Y”.

Windows setup

If ports are enabled in the BIOS, but devices connected via the USB interface are not detected by the system, then check the registry editor, device manager and group policy editor. It is possible that changes were made to the system through them, due to which the ports are no longer working. You should start with the Registry Editor.

If USB support is enabled in the Registry Editor, check the controller drivers in Device Manager.

If you see an exclamation mark icon next to the controller, and you are sure that the interface is supported in the registry editor, then this means that there are problems with the drivers. First try updating the software:

If updating the controller software does not help, update the motherboard driver. Download it from the manufacturer's website and install it manually. Another way to update the drivers of all controllers at once is to remove them from the system. Right-click on the controllers and select "Delete". After a reboot, the system will automatically install controller drivers, so you no longer have to worry about how to enable the USB ports - they will work just like that.

If only removable devices connected via USB do not work, check in the Group Policy Editor to see if a read ban is set.

Find the Removable Devices: Deny Read option and set it to Disable. The problem with identifying flash drives and external drives should disappear.

Hardware damage to ports

If the laptop's USB ports or the south bridge on the motherboard are damaged, then no methods will help enable the interface. Therefore, if the connectors stop working after mechanical impact, liquid getting inside the case, short circuit or other negative factors, then you should take the laptop to a service center for diagnostics.

If you encounter a situation where your computer stops responding to commands entered using a connected USB keyboards or mouse, check options USB in settings power plan. Sometimes Windows Maybe turn offUSB devices during downtime, which contributes computer energy saving, but not always justified and convenient in terms of work.
Prevent temporary shutdown USB ports If you are faced with a similar situation, in power plan should be changed power settings. To do this, click the "Start" button and in the "Search programs and files" field, enter the word "Power Options" and press "Enter". The "Power Options" icon will appear, click on it with the left mouse button.

Open power plans You can also from the control panel by going to it in a way convenient for you and, if necessary, switching to the “Small Icons” view mode and selecting the “Power Options” item.

The "Select a power plan" window will open, in which, opposite current energy saving plan Click "Set up power plan".

In the next step, click "Change advanced power settings."

In the window that opens, find the item “USB Settings” and first expand it, and then “Option to temporarily disable USB port” by clicking on +.

Click Allowed and a drop-down panel will appear with options to choose from. There are only two of them, select “Prohibited”.

Sandbox

Quickly and easily disable USB ports on Win7 part 2

In the previous article, I wrote how an inexperienced user can disable USB ports using group policies. However, I forgot that different versions of OS Windows 7 contain different functions.
Please note that I am not talking about installing additional free software, because I know from experience that by closing a hole with free software you risk opening five more. I suggest using the built-in OS features.

I know from experience that in order to save money, small companies install such versions of “Home Basic” or “Home Premium” on their staff’s machines (well, they only install this if the company is trying to work legally and does not want a fine for illegal software. And those companies that are not afraid of inspections then install All pirated software and do not suffer))).
And on the “Home Basic” and “Home Premium” versions there are no accessories inherent to their older brothers. And closing ports using group policies will not work. Therefore, we need to block access directly to the executive files that initiate the initialization of devices connected to USB ports.

Let's say that there are 3 users on the machine, “Operator”, “Manager” and “Administrator” in the Administrators and Users groups
It is necessary to make sure that the flash drive can only be used by a user under the “Administrator” account.

Turn on the computer, log in as an administrator, open Explorer and write "%SystemRoot%\inf\"(hereinafter in the text copy without quotes).

Next, in the search we write “USB”

Will output approximately 18 elements. (depends on what system is installed, OS version, installed additional drivers for USB)
We essentially only need 8 files.
usb.inf
usbstor.inf
usbport.inf
winusb.inf
usb.PNF
usbstor.PNF
usbport.PNF
winusb.PNF

Then we need to block access to these files to other users. Right click on the file "usbstor.inf" -> "properties"

Go to the tab "safety", and press the button "change"

Then we select the users we need to disable. For us these are “Operator”, “Manager” and “System”. If we need to disable all accounts that belong to the “Users” group (these are “Operator” and “Manager”), then we simply ban the group. If only a specific one, let’s say “Operator”, then select this particular account.

Attention, the “System” account also needs to be blocked from using the file.
Then we set a ban on use, switch to another user and also set bans. When the required users are disabled (for me it is only “system” and “users”)

click the “Ok” button

There will be a warning that this will lead to the fact that access to the file will be unavailable and all that (if you want, you can read it), click the “Ok” button again.
Again we read the message about whether we really want to do this (you can read it if you wish), and press the “OK” button again.

And we repeat this procedure for the next 7 files.
usb.inf
usbport.inf
winusb.inf
usb.PNF
usbstor.PNF
usbport.PNF
winusb.PNF

If this is only an installed OS, then everything is in order and, in theory, access to the flash drive will not be available to selected users. However, if flash drives were already connected to this system by those users who needed to disable access to flash drives, then you will need to change the key in the registry.

Click start -> write regedit -> open the registry

Open the folder “USBSTOR”
and change the value of the “Start” parameter to 4

Tags: disable, USB ports, flash drive

Want to protect the data on your Windows 10 computer by blocking or disabling USB drives on your PC? In this guide, we'll look at five easy ways to enable or disable USB drives in Windows 10.

Blocking USB drives in Windows 10 can be done in different ways. You can use the Registry, BIOS, or third-party utilities to enable or disable USB drives on Windows 10.

Below are five ways to enable or disable USB drives in Windows 10.

Method 1 of 5

Enable or disable USB drives in Windows 10 using the registry

If you're comfortable making changes to the Windows registry, you can enable or disable USB drives in Windows 10 by manually editing the registry. Here's how to do it.

Step 1: Open Registry Editor

Step 2: Continue to the next section:

Step 3: Now on the right side double click on the option "Start" and change its value to 4 to disable USB drives on your Windows 10 PC. Change the Start value to 3 to enable USB drives and storage devices on your PC.

Method 2 of 5

Enable or disable USB ports through Device Manager

Did you know that you can disable all USB ports using Device Manager? By disabling USB ports, you prevent users from using USB ports to connect USB drives to your computer.

When you disable USB ports, the USBs on your PC will not work and hence no one will be able to connect USB drives. You will need to re-enable the USB ports to connect devices via USB. Here's how to enable or disable USB ports using Device Manager.

Step 1: Right click on the button "Start" on the taskbar and select .

Step 2: Expand USB controllers. Right-click on all the entries one by one, and click "Disable device". Click "Yes" when you see a confirmation dialog.

Method 3 of 5

Use USB Drive Disabler to enable or disable USB drives

If you don't want to edit the registry manually, you can use a free tool called USB Drive Disabler to quickly enable or disable USB storage devices on your PC. Simply download USB Disabler, launch it, and then select Enable USB Drives or Disable USB Drives to enable or disable USB drives on your PC.

Method 4 of 5

Disable or enable USB ports in BIOS

Some manufacturers offer an option in the BIOS/UEFI to disable or enable USB ports. Boot into BIOS/UEFI and check if there is an option to disable or enable USB ports. Check your PC's user manual to see if there is an option to enable or disable USB ports in the BIOS/UEFI.

Method 5 of 5

Enabling or disabling USB storage devices USB Guard

Nomesoft USB Guard is another free utility for blocking USB drives on computers running Windows 10 and earlier versions of Windows. You must use this program as an administrator to enable or disable USB storage devices.

Write protection for USB drives can be useful as an additional security option.

USB ports can be disabled without using third-party programs. Using Windows tools, you can disable all USB ports at once, or those that need to be turned off at the moment.

The theft of confidential information from users' computers is currently extremely important. To prevent data leakage, you may need to disable USB ports. Very often we have to connect various external storage devices to the PC, in particular via USB ports. These external devices may contain malicious code, which actually causes confidential data to leak into the hands of malicious users. Today we will tell you how you can teach your computer to quickly disconnect USB ports without resorting to installing and using third-party programs.

To implement our plans, we will need to make some changes to the Windows registry. To do this, first we need to open it, to do this, in the Windows search bar (in Windows XP-7 the search bar is located in the Start menu, in Windows 8 in the panel, as shown in the figure below), you need to enter the command regedit, press the key “Enter” and select the registry editor regedit.exe from the search results.

In the registry editor window that opens on your screen, to start disabling USB ports, go to the “UsbStor” registry key, opening the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services sections in sequence. Find the “Start” parameter in the final section, left-click on it and select “Change” in the context menu, and change its value from “3” to “4”, where “3” is the default value of the parameter.

After changes have been made to the registry, a flash drive connected to the computer via a USB port will still be detected by the system, but will not automatically connect to it. In other words, it will be impossible to write data from the flash drive or run any programs from it. If you need to return the USB port settings to their original ones, all you need to do is change the value of the “Start” parameter to the previous one, that is, “3”. In this case, you do not need to restart your computer for the changes you made to take effect.

Disabling certain USB ports

There are times when it is not possible to disable all USB ports on the system at once and you only need to disable some of the USB ports. In this case, you can use another method.

Launch “Device Manager” on your computer, then find it and go to the “USB Controllers” line. By the way, to open “Device Manager” just press the key combination “Win” + “Pause” and in the window that opens, click on the corresponding link on the left side.

Now in the newly opened “Properties” window USB ports” Go to the “Drivers” tab and click on the “Disable” button in it. All is ready!

We hope that you have found the answer to your question - “how to disable USB ports” and now, depending on the situation, you will be able to disable them all at once, or only those that you consider necessary.