If you recently tried to open the Windows registry editor and received the message “”Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator, then you are not alone! This error message can occur for a number of different reasons, some with solutions and some without.
Most of the time you will see this in corporate environments where the IT staff has locked the computer by disabling Windows installation and services. If it is a policy made by the main servers, it can be very difficult or impossible to bypass. However, you can still try!
Another major reason why the registry is disabled is because of a malicious virus. By disabling access to the registry, viruses can prevent users from repairing their systems.
In this article, I will show you a few different methods you can try to enable access to the registry.
Table of Contents
Method 1 – Group Policy
The first method involves opening the Group Policy editor in Windows and checking the settings for registry access. Unfortunately, the group policy editor is only available in the Professional, Ultimate, and Pro editions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you have a Starter or Home edition, this method won’t work.
Step 1: Click Begin and type gpedit.msc into the search box.
Step 2: Towards User Configuration – administrative form – System.
Step 3: In the right pane, double-click Prevent access to registry editing tools.
Step 4: If the setting is set to Enabledyou can change it to Not configured or Disable.
Now try to run the registry editor and see if that works. If not, go to command prompt (Start, Run, type cmd) and type gpupdate, but only if you are not in a corporate environment. In a corporate network, gpupdate command will reload the setting from the server, maybe just overwrite the setting to Enabled.
You can try to avoid getting settings from the server by restarting your computer but disconnecting your network card so it can’t connect to the network. You may also want to try the whole procedure above when disconnecting from the network to make sure that corporate policy doesn’t override local policy.
If you have a computer at home, then you don’t have to worry about all this, just restart your computer and you should be able to edit the registry again.
Method 2 – Registry Key
Even if you cannot open the GUI registry editor, there is a DOS command line tool called REG that allows you to edit, update, and manipulate the registry. Using this command we can try to add a registry permission key. Click Start, type Run and paste the following line in Run box:
REGISTER more HKCU \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System / v DisableRegistryTools / t REG_DWORD / d 0 / f
Now try to open the registry editor and see if it is accessible. You may have to restart your computer first. Since Windows is running, you may have problems using this method.
Fortunately, there are ways to edit the registry while offline, that is, edit the registry without having to load Windows. Another good tech blog wrote a detailed article about different ways to edit registry offline, so check if the Run command method doesn’t work. If this doesn’t work either, keep reading!
Method 3 – Rename regedit
Sometimes a virus or malware program will just prevent the registry from loading by the name of the EXE file (regedit.exe). This is pretty easy to overlook as you can just rename the EXE file to something else like regedit_new.exe and it can load fine.
You can find the regedit executable in C: \ Windows category. Since this folder is a Windows system folder, you won’t be able to just right click and rename it. You will get an error message stating that you do not have permission from TrustedInstaller.
To rename the file you will have to change the owner to yourself, then change the permissions to have Full Control. I have written down the entire procedure for change permissions from TrustedInstaller so you can delete, rename, or move files.
Also, check to see if regedit has been given a different name regedit.com. Some viruses rename the .exe file so that it doesn’t load when you try to run it. In these cases, just rename the file back to regedit.exe and see if that works.
Method 4 – Symantec
Symantec has a really old file from 2005 that still seems to work with this registry issue. Some viruses will change the shell command registry keys so that whenever you run an EXE file, it just runs the virus instead. This file will replace those keys with the original defaults. After you download it just right click on it and select Setting.
When you open the link above, make sure you right click on the link to UnHookExec.inf and choose Save link asotherwise it will just load the contents of the file in your web browser.
The Save styles, templates should have been set to Setup Informationbut in case it’s not, change it to that.
There are a few other ways you can try to enable the registry, but I haven’t had success with any of them and that’s why I’m not covering them here. If you’re not in a corporate environment, the first thing you should do is install anti-virus and anti-malware software to try and remove any malicious programs that might be causing the problem. .
Check out my previous articles that can help you remove viruses and malware:
The best software to remove malware and spyware
Use Windows Defender Offline to Remove Virus
How to protect your computer from viruses and malware
If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Interesting!
