Hiding Control Panel Applets

A reader wants to prevent users from accessing Control Panel applets.

Bob Chronister

July 29, 2003

1 Min Read
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I'm having trouble with users changing aspects of their Windows 2000 workstations. Can I restrict access to Control Panel applets?

You can configure Group Policy to hide Control Panel applets. Open a registry editor, navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer registry subkey, and add the REG_DWORD subkey RestrictCpl. To enable the policy, set the subkey's value to 1. (The subkey's default is 0, which disables the policy.) This policy also works in Windows XP. You can use other methods to accomplish the same thing, but this policy is the easiest to set and use.

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