Posted by: nowiremember | June 17, 2008

Disable USB storage under OS X or Windows

OS X
For OS X, the guide describes disabling USB and Firewire storage:
1. Log on with an administrator account.
2. Browse to the /System/Library/Extensions folder on the system disk.
3. Trash both IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext and IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext, which are found
in this directory.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Reboot the machine.

Windows
Disabling USB storage on a Windows platform is only a little more complicated:
1. From Explorer’s folder options, ensure that hidden files and folders are displayed, file extensions are not
hidden, and simple file sharing is disabled.
2. Open up the properties for %systemroot%\Inf\Usbtror.inf (%systemroot% would normally be C:\Windows).

3. Select the Security tab and make sure that all options for all users are set to deny. This must include
administrators and SYSTEM.
4. Repeat the above for %systemroot%\Inf\Usbstor.pnf.
5. If USB storage devices have been used on this machine previously, open up the registry editor; otherwise,
ignore steps 6 and 7.
6. Browse to the registry location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor.
7. Open up the registry key Start and change the data value to 4. Close the registry editor.

That’s it! If simple file sharing was enabled previously, don’t forget to re-enable it.


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