Disable Command Prompt in Windows 10

How To Disable the Command Prompt in Windows 10

Sometimes it can be useful to prevent users from accessing the classic Command Prompt app in Windows 10. E.g. if you are a system administrator, you may want to apply this restriction when your users should not use console apps and built-in tools. There are two ways to disable the command prompt in Windows 10.

In Windows 10, the command prompt was significantly updated. It has a LOT of new features which make it really useful. These include an extended set of hotkeys such as:

• CTRL + A - Select all
• CTRL + C - Copy
• CTRL + F - Find
• CTRL + M - Mark
• CTRL + V - Paste
• CTRL + ↑ / CTRL + ↓ - Scroll line up or down
• CTRL + PgUp / CTRL + PgDn - Scroll whole page up or down

The console window can now be freely resized and opened fullscreen. Also, it supports text selection using the mouse like any other text editor.

Besides these usability improvements, the command prompt also received some appearance enhancements. You can make it transparent.

If you need to apply a restriction and prevent users from accessing the command prompt, Windows 10 offers you at least two methods, a Group Policy option, and a Group Policy Registry tweak. The first method can be used in editions of Windows 10 that come with the Local Group Policy Editor app. If you are running Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition, then the Local Group Policy Editor app is available in the OS out of the box. Windows 10 Home users can apply a Registry tweak. Let's review these methods.

To Disable Command Prompt in Windows 10,

1. Open the Local Group Policy editor app, or launch it for all users except Administrator, or for a specif user.
2. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System on the left.
3. On the right, find the policy setting Prevent access to the command prompt.
4. Double-click on it and set the policy to Enabled.
5. Also, you can set to Yes the Disable the command prompt script processing option to prevent execution of batch (*.bat and *.cmd) files.
6. Click on Apply and OK.

You are done. If someone try to access the command prompt, regardless of the method he or she use the operation will be cancelled with the following message:

Tip: See How to Reset All Local Group Policy Settings at once in Windows 10.

Now, let's see how the same can be done with a Registry tweak.

Disable Run Dialog in Windows 10 With a Registry Tweak

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System
   Tip: See how to jump to the desired Registry key with one click.
3. If you do not have such a key, then just create it.
4. Here, create a new 32-bit DWORD value DisableCMD. Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows, you still need to use a 32-bit DWORD as the value type.
5. Set it to 1 to disable the command prompt and batch files.
6. Set it to 2 to disable the command prompt console only.
7. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in again to your user account.

Later, you can delete the DisableCMD value to allow the user to use both Control Panel and Settings.

Tip: You can try to enable GpEdit.msc in Windows 10 Home.

That's it.

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