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 😛

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 19:01 and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

20 Responses to “How To Enable Regedit”

  1. Isidro Lahora says:
    November 19, 2008 at 23:57

    Your suggestion worked. Thank you very much.

  2. Wesley Spikes says:
    December 16, 2008 at 22:00

    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. 🙂

  3. sheldon604 says:
    January 4, 2009 at 04:44

    Thank you! That’s awesome!

  4. laine says:
    February 6, 2009 at 05:07

    Thank you! it’s really worked

  5. qadors says:
    March 13, 2009 at 15:44

    good… it work….

  6. Aadil Pitafi says:
    March 16, 2009 at 14:02

    Thanks. It worked.

  7. parvez says:
    March 28, 2009 at 12:10

    regedit enabled but notdisplaying why

  8. Jonathan JP says:
    June 17, 2009 at 05:05

    Thanx a lot, Sukron it worked mia mia

  9. Kohl says:
    July 31, 2009 at 01:50

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

  10. Ahmad Elkhatib says:
    August 30, 2009 at 17:41

    You Are The Best

  11. Clean the Registry says:
    January 14, 2010 at 23:26

    lol, neat trick. Looks more like a major security hole to me…but it worked 🙂

  12. best registry guy says:
    February 7, 2010 at 10:41

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

  13. mikey likey says:
    February 7, 2010 at 13:49

    Many thanks!

  14. Sophie Sivak says:
    February 23, 2010 at 10:48

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

  15. Diane Theuner says:
    March 24, 2010 at 16:51

    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. Ingeborg Furness says:
    June 16, 2010 at 12:46

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

  17. Mark says:
    June 26, 2011 at 08:48

    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:
    August 21, 2011 at 14:19

    Wow this is great!

  19. Roy says:
    September 5, 2011 at 10:31

    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

  20. syama says:
    August 11, 2012 at 22:07

    Look at this article for enabling registry editing:
    http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b07/fix-registry-editing-has-been-disabled-by-your-administrator.php

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