Restrict Access to Control Panel and Settings in Windows 10

Windows 10 includes two management tools which have most of its options and settings. The classic Control Panel is one of them and the other one is the modern Settings app. If you are an administrator, you may want to restrict user access to these tools. In this article, we will see how it can be done.

Example: The Control panel is disabled.

Unlike the Control Panel, the Settings app doesn't show a message when disabled. It just flashes and closes quickly without showing a message.

Settings is a Universal app bundled with Windows 10. It is created to replace the classic Control Panel for both touch screen users and mouse and keyboard Desktop users. It consists of several pages which bring new options to configure Windows 10 along with some older options inherited from the classic Control Panel. In every release, Windows 10 is getting more and more classic options converted to a modern page in the Settings app. At some point, Microsoft might remove the classic Control Panel completely.

As of this writing, the classic Control Panel still comes with a number of options and tools which are not available in Settings. It has a familiar user interface which many users prefer over the Settings app. You can use Administrative tools, manage user accounts on the computer in a flexible way, maintain data backups, change the functionality of hardware and many other things. You can pin Control Panel applets to the taskbar to access frequently used settings faster.

In some cases, you might want to prevent some users of your computer from accessing the Control Panel and Settings. This can be done with a Group Policy option. For a number of Windows 10 editions, the Group Policy Editor app is not available. In that case, you can apply a Registry tweak instead. Let's start with the Registry tweak.

Tip: It is also possible to hide or show some pages from the Settings app.

First we will see how to disable Control Panel and Settings for just a single user account.

To restrict Access to Control Panel and Settings in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following Registry key:

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

   Tip: See how to jump to the desired Registry key with one click.

   If you do not have such a key, then just create it.

3. Here, create a new 32-bit DWORD value NoControlPanel. Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows, you still need to use a 32-bit DWORD as the value type.
   Set it to 1 to disable Control Panel and Settings.
4. 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 NoControlPanel value to allow the user to use both Control Panel and Settings.

Restrict Access to Control Panel and Settings for all users

To disable the Control panel and Settings for all users, ensure that you are signed in as Administrator before proceeding.

Then, go to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create the same value here, NoControlPanel as described above.

Tip: You can switch between HKCU and HKLM in Windows 10 Registry Editor quickly.

Restart Windows 10 to apply the restriction and you are done.

To save your time, I made ready-to-use Registry files. You can download them here:

Download Registry Files

Restrict Access to Control Panel and Settings with Group Policy

If you are running Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition, you can use the Local Group Policy Editor app to configure the options mentioned above with a GUI.

1. Press Win + R keys together on your keyboard and type:

   gpedit.msc

   Press Enter.

2. Group Policy Editor will open. Go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel. Enable the policy option Prohibit access to Control Panel and PC settings as shown below.

That's it.