Restrict or disable USB ports for mass storage devices.
How to restrict or disable USB ports for usage of mass storage devices. This article describes the all methods for restricting the usages of mass storage device.
Nowadays the cost of USB storage devices are so cheap that everybody is carrying these devices for data stealing. This results in data theft and situation is worse when someone copies your data as well as he transmits virus knowingly or unknowingly from his USB device to your PC. Assume you are working as a system administrator in an institute or organization. You are always worried about data theft from the PCs installed in the network. Don't worry; there are many ways to disable USB ports. Here is the complete list of methods for disabling USB ports for mass storage devices.
1. Disabling USB ports from BIOS:
(a) Switch on PC and continue pressing F2 or delete key (depending upon your BIOS version) to enter into BIOS setting.
(b) Locate the setting for USB ports.
(c) Disable the USB ports from BIOS.
(d) Save the BIOS setting and reboot.
2. Disabling USB ports from device manager:
(a) Right click on the My Computer > click on manage, it will open the computer management console.
(b) Click on the System Tools > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus controller.
(c) Right click on the all USB Root Hub one by one and click on disable.
Note : In this way, we can disable specific USB ports.
3. Disabling USB ports by Uninstalling Device Driver from Device Manager:
(a) Follow the step mentioned at para 2(a) and 2(b).
(b) Right click on the all USB Root Hub one by one and click on uninstall.
Caution : If we disable USB ports by any of three methods mentioned above, all USB devices (like printer, mouse, keyboard etc. ) will also stop working.
Here are some tricks by which we can disable USB port for mass storage devices only.
4. Disabling USB ports from registry.
(a) Click on Start > Run. Type "regedit" and press enter. It will open the registry editor.
(b) Traverse to the following registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
(c) In the right pane, double click on Start and change its value data from 3 to 4 and Click OK.
5. By restricting permission of usbstor.inf and usbstor.PNF files.
(a) Open the folder C:\Windows\inf\
(b) Right click on the usbstor.inf, select properties > security tab > Click on edit.
(c) Click on Users from Group or user names and set the permission Deny against Full Control.
(d) Click OK > OK.
(e) Set the deny permission for usbstor.PNF also in the same way.
6. By using USB device disable utility.
(a) You can search and download the free utility for managing USB port.
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