How can I hide my CD drive and restrict its use? 1

[someTimeOnly]

How can I hide my CD drive or stop from being used by others using my PC.

 

[SYAR2003]

TweakXP can do that for you .

 

[bcastner]

You can:
. Hide the drive letter
. Disable Autoplay
. Disable burning

Or do all three. The first will prevent access to the drive from My Computer or Explorer, but not from burning programs or Media Players necessarily.

. To hide the drive, as SYAR2003, noted with TweakUI or through group policy. Hiding the drive is likely easier using TweakUI:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

. TweakUI will also allow you to disable Autoplay.

. Burning can be denied through Group Policy, or a registry edit. See:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/cd_burning.htm

It is likely that you want to deny to others, buy not yourself these features.

You can selectively enable/disable Group Policy settings with a few simple tricks:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/gp07.htm

Or my new favorite toy, Doug Knox's Policy Editor for Workgroups: thread779-685048

 

[someTimeOnly]

I downloaded TweakUiPowerSetup.exe from

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powert...

But after just double cliking the exe I got

"TweakUiPowerSetup.exe - entry point not found

the procedure entry point getdlldirectorye could not be located in the dynamic link library kernel32.dll."

msg. So wht to do now.

 

[bcastner]

Try again:

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...52-839afb2a2679/TweakUIPowertoySetup_ia64.exe

 

[someTimeOnly]

I tried:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/c/a/fca6767b-9...

But this time with only changed msg

"is not a valid win32 application"

I was just expecting some Step-by-step easy instructions for my problem like
start->program->... "and U have done" msg at the end.

 

[SYAR2003]

What is the letter ov the CD drive ( is it D: ? )

SYAR

 

[someTimeOnly]

G:

(I think step-by-step instructions have started)

 

[linney]

If you want to experiment with registry settings (after backing up keys first (exporting them)) you can look at these.

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1048/

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/979/

http://www.winguides.com/search.php?guide=registry&keywords=disable+cd+drive&x=9&y=6

 

[pbxman]

right-click and disable the drive in device manager. I do this for floppy and CDROM drives on our network. Normal users (non admin rights) cannot re-enable the drives because permissions dont allow them to, but us admins can login and re-enable the drive if we need to. Works great. If your other users are admins - tell them to get their own d@mn pc!

pbxman
Systems Administrator

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful.

 

[someTimeOnly]

hi pbxman, So for very cool

Start->Control Panel->System
(wind-logo + Pause Break)
->Hardware->Device Manager

right-click and disable the drive

I've done that thing till some other solution.

Can I schedule this process? Say on that day do it.

 

[someTimeOnly]

Now how to restrict 'control panel' access