How To Disable USB Storage Devices In Windows 8 / 7

With this trick, you can disable access to your USB(Universal Serial Bus) ports on your Windows-based PC to prevent people from taking out data without permission or spreading viruses through the use of USB (pen and flash) drives.

To use this trick to disable USB ports, follow the steps given below:-

1. Click on Start.and then Click on Run.
2. Type "regedit" without quotes. This will launch the Registry Editor.
3. Navigate to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbstor.
4. In the work area, double click on Start. In the Value Data box, enter 4.And Click on OK.
5. Close Registry Editor and refresh your desktop. 

Step 1: Click on Run. If you cannot find RUN, Press Windows Logo Key And R in your keyboard or type it in the search box.

Step 2: Pull up the Run dialog box and launch the Registry Editor (regedit).

Step 3: In Registry Editor, navigate to the following value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

Step 4: From the right-side pane, double-click Start and change the value to “4”. Make sure that the value type is Hexadecimal.

Step 5: Apply your changes and reboot the machine.

That’s it – any USB removable storage device that was configured on your machine, will now not work. Should you want to enable those back, change the value back to 3 and reboot the machine again. The process applies to both Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems.