Cannot Access Regedit, How to Fix It?

Many times when working on a computer that has been infected with a virus, trojan, or piece of spyware I find myself with my most important command, Regedit, the Windows Registry Editor being disabled. Virus creators like to disable the Registry Editor so it makes solving the problem and removing the issue difficult.

Sometimes administrators in IT departments may place restrictions on using the regedit command to keep employees from changes things on company computers, but viruses and other issues may also try to disable it.

Listed below you will find the different ways to enable regedit, the Registry Editor.

First we'll begin with the method that appears to work the best.

Method 1 - Enabling the Registry with VBScript

Doug Knox, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, has created a VBScript that enables or disables the Registry Editor based on the following location in the registry. Of course, since the registry editor is disabled, you can't change it manually, so Doug wrote a Visual Basic Script to accomplish the task.

HKey_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\

Visit Doug's page and download Registry Tools VBScript to your desktop, double-click on it to run it, then reboot your computer and try to open the Registry Editor.