How To Enable Regedit

If you get the error saying “Regedit has been disabled by the system administrator” when trying to use the Windows XP registry editor, fear not. There is an easy way to re-enable regedit.

Click Start -> Run… and enter this command (all on one line) :

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

You may need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

In case your Run… menu has been disabled and you can’t use the above method here’s another way to make regedit work. Download regtools.vbs (by Doug Knox) and double-click the file. If everything goes well you will get a message box saying “Registry Editing Tools are now ENABLED”.

If the above tricks didn’t help and you still can’t access regedit then your computer is probably infected by a virus or spyware that is repeatedly disabling the registry editor. You will need to get rid of that malware first. Take a look at Spybot S&D (freeware) or Ad-Aware (shareware) for possible solutions.

Random rant : Yes, pretty much everyone “advanced” user knows how to enable/disable regedit or the task manager. I wrote this post not as a revealing of arcane knowledge, but as a test of… well, surely you can guess that. Or maybe I was just lazy and there isn’t much hidden meaning to this random tip πŸ˜›

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20 Responses to “How To Enable Regedit”

  1. Isidro Lahora says:

    Your suggestion worked. Thank you very much.

  2. For anyone that is still having problems after running the above fix, try also running the following:

    REG add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

    While this should be obvious to anyone who’s worked with the windows registry a fair bit, it’s worth noting none the less. πŸ™‚

  3. sheldon604 says:

    Thank you! That’s awesome!

  4. laine says:

    Thank you! it’s really worked

  5. qadors says:

    good… it work….

  6. Aadil Pitafi says:

    Thanks. It worked.

  7. parvez says:

    regedit enabled but notdisplaying why

  8. Jonathan JP says:

    Thanx a lot, Sukron it worked mia mia

  9. Kohl says:

    everytime i try to fix it it keep saying disabled by admin ive tried everything.

  10. Ahmad Elkhatib says:

    You Are The Best

  11. lol, neat trick. Looks more like a major security hole to me…but it worked πŸ™‚

  12. Never used regtools.vbs before and this one worked indeed.. preferred ccleaner but editing regedit is easy with the file πŸ™‚

  13. mikey likey says:

    Many thanks!

  14. Sophie Sivak says:

    I saw sites on alike topic, but never saw your site. I totted it to dearies and i’ll come back.

  15. You cannot believe how long ive been searching for something like this. Scrolled through 9 pages of Yahoo results couldnt find diddly squat. First page of bing. There was this…. Gotta start using that more often

  16. Hi really informative blog post! Pleasee carry on this particular amazing work.

  17. Mark says:

    Great dude.. this really work… I save it in note pad and make it a .Bat file.. in case that my regedit will error again.. i’ll just double click it then repair…

  18. Doug says:

    Wow this is great!

  19. Roy says:

    When I start / Run and type – REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f It came out 1 second and gone and even IE. Please advice. Roy

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