Occassionally, I’ll run across a virus that takes away some or all of your admistrative rights on a Windows XP machine. Not only is it frustrating for the end user, but its frustrating for me as well. Recenently, I customer brought in a computer with several problems, the majority of which were caused by viruses, spyware, and adware programs.
General practice for me is to first check the Windows registry with a “regedit” from the Run option under the Windows Start button to see what I’m dealing with. On this computer, I couldn’t access the registry and got this error instead: “Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator”. Needless to say, I hate when that happens. Fortunately, it’s a pretty fast and simple fix.
How to Enable the Registry Editor
To enable your registry editor after its been shut down by a malware program, follow these simple steps:
- Click on the Windows Start button.
- Select the “Run” menu item.
- Type the following string into the box:
REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f - Click the “OK” button and you’re done!
You should now be able to access your registry editor.
