There are times when you want to prevent others from copying your data but you still need them to be able to view it on your computer. The following tip will help you do exactly that.
As always it is the registry that comes to your rescue. Open the Registry Editor by typing regedit in RUN (WIN+R) dialog (more keyboard shortcuts). Go to th key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl
StorageDevicePolicies
Create a new DWORD named WriteProtect (Right Click on right pane and select New»DWORD). Edit the value and make it 1. Just restart Windows explorer and you are done. Next time somebody tries to copy data to the external storage device they will see
If you need to copy something just make the stored value of WriteProtect to 0
**Tips : to restart Windows Explorer take Shutdown. Click Cancel while holding down SHIFT+CTRL+ALT, this will close Windows Explorer. Now take TASK MANAGER by pressing ALT+CTRL+DEL take File>>New Task>> [ explorer ] and press Enter. **
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can we make a file un-copy-able?
if yes how?
Hi Iqbal,
Thanks a lot for visiting my blog man. I have tried the above mentioned trick on Vista and seems to work. So it would probably work with Windows7. Also there is an application named “Prevent” that can be used to prevent copying to USB drives. It works with Win7. I haven’t used the application. I will test the trick on Win7 in a couple of days and leave you a reply.
Hi Ajith, think your amazing mate! My problem is that I want to try this in Windows 7, will the instructions you gave still be the same? Thank you.
I’ll check soon and reply.
Hi,
i would like to know if this works in vista, because I tried it and I don’t know if I did something wrong or if It doesn’t work in vista.
Thank you for your time
Hi Roger,
The files from USB can be copied to the HDD. The second thing can’t exactly be done using the default XP utilities. yOu might need some other software to do so. Because you can lock reading a file. And copying is similar to reading.
Hi Ajith,
This will prevent people from copying files from HDD to USB. But can files from USB be copied to HDD?
And is there anyway that you know of that prevents people from copying a certain files only (only allows them to view from the pc).
Hi Jo2xflash,
thanks for coming to my blog. Please subscribe to the full RSS feed [http://www.exnol.com/feed] so that you can read the future posts right at your desktop.