How To Prevent A Program From Running In Windows 7

Sometimes the system admin, or parent may not want a particular program from running on a computer (ie.torrents and other downloading programs) for obvious security reasons. This little guide will show you how to prevent a program from running, and will still apply even if the program is uninstalled and reinstalled.

1. First off go to your registry editor by pressing Winkey+R and typing in regedit

2. Then you want to navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

3. Next right click on the right handside pane and choose New->DWORD (32bit) Value and name it DisallowRun.

4. Once it’s created, double click on it and change its value to 1 and then hit Ok.

5. Now right click on Explorer and choose New->Key. Name the key DisallowRun aswell.

6. Then right click on the right handside pane and choose New->String Value

You can now enter any name you like, ie. Block Bittorrent and then double click on it and  in the value data field you want to insert the exe extension.

(You can find the .exe extension by right clicking on the program and going to properties in all programs)

7. Finally restart your computer and next time you try to launch the disabled application you will get an error message like this.

To disable more than one program, you need to repeat steps 5,6 and 7 for each .exe you want to disable.

To re enable the program, simply delete the registry entry that you made in steps 5,6,7 and restart