Disable Access to CD ROM Drive via My Computer?

Dennis Faas's picture

Infopackets Reader 'Rose' Writes:

" Dear Dennis,

My question for you today is: how can I make my CD ROM Drive available to users logging in with Administrator rights only?

Here's the problem: my kid brother shares the family computer, which has Windows XP professional installed on it. He likes to play online games (which are installed via the CD ROM drive); unfortunately, the games he plays seem to crashed the system.

As such, I've set up a separate user account with 'general' user access and have disabled the network card so that he cannot access the Internet when using the computer. Now, only users with Administrator access level can use the Internet.

Can you please tell me if there is a way I can also make the CD ROM drive inaccessible to users without Administration rights? Ideally I would like to password protect the CD ROM drive, but don't know if that's possible. "

My response:

Interesting question.

I can't say I've ever heard of a program that can password protect a CD ROM drive from being accessed (if anyone knows of such a program, please contact me).

There might be, however, a way around your problem.

Using a program called TweakUI Powertoys, you can enable / disable CD drives from being displayed under My Computer. Using the same program, you can also disable AutoPlay so discs won't run automatically when a disc is inserted into the drive.

I believe you need Administrator access to run TweakUI, so here's what I suggest:

  1. Login as the Administrator user under Windows XP.
  2. Give your brother's account Administrator access temporarily.
  3. Log out as the Administrator user, then login as him.
  4. Install TweakUI and run it under his account; disable the CD drives and Auto run, then uninstall TweakUI.
  5. Log out as your brother, and then login back in as the Administrator, and then change his access level back to "general" user access.
  6. Next, log out as the Administrator, and login as your brother again.
  7. The CD ROM drive should no longer appear under My Computer and the Auto run should also be disabled. ;-)

Links for TweakUI:

Disable / Enable CD Autorun?

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