subject: Use Local Group Policy to Restrict Access to Drives in Your Computer In Windows [print this page] Use Local Group Policy to Restrict Access to Drives in Your Computer In Windows
Do your computer is shared with your friends or your family members? Have you ever worried your important data will be deleted by them without intention alought such situation hasn't happened? Now I will show you how to use Local Group Policy to restrict someone access to drives in your computer in Windows.
Note: In this example, Local Group Policy Editor is not available on home versions of Windows 7 or Vista
Restrict Someone Access to Drives
Just type gpedit.msc in the search box of the Start Menu and hit Enter.
Navigate to User Configuration Administrative Templates Windows Components Windows Explorer. Double click on "Prevent access to drives from My Computer" on the right side under Setting.
In the new screen, select "Enable" and then under Options from the drop down menu you can restrict a certain drive, a combination of drives, or restrict them all. The main drive you would probably want to restrict is the C: drive or which ever lettered drive Windows is installed on. Restricting all drives means they can't access the CD or DVD drive and even can not use a flash drive if they need to get files from it.
Note: This setting won't prevent users from using programs that access the local drives.
What's nice is that the restrictions will take effect immediately (no restart is required).
When a user opens up My Computer they'll be able to see which drives are listed, but when they try to access a restricted drive, they'll get the error message shown below.
Note: In this tutorial we used Windows 7 Ultimate, but this process also works with XP Professional and Vista (not in Home versions) the screens just look different.
conclusion
Local Group Policy is a useful tool which allows you to customize several settings for how you want to administer your machine. It can help to keep a shared computer stable and secure by Restricting access to certain drives in addition to other security and access measures.
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