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Prevent Access to Command Prompt

Posted August 2002 by Steve Sinchak

Prevents users from running the interactive command prompt, Cmd.exe. This setting also determines whether batch files (.cmd and .bat) can run on the computer.
If you enable this setting and the user tries to open a command window, the system displays a message explaining that a setting prevents the action.
Note: Do not prevent the computer from running batch files if the computer uses logon, logoff, startup, or shutdown batch file scripts, or for users that use Terminal Services.

START > RUN > GPEDIT.MSC > USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > SYSTEM > FIND PREVENT ACCESS TO THE COMMAND PROMPT > RIGHT CLICK > PROPERTIES > CLICK ENABLE > OK REBOOT

Editor's note: This will disable the command for all users including the local administrator. If you want to disable this for specific users only (and for XP Home users) make the change in the registry. Login to the account you want to change and create the following registry entries:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\ DisableCMD  dword  0x00000001   to disable command prompt and batch files
or
DisableCMD  dword  0x00000002   to disable command prompt but not batch files

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