In this guide, we will show you two different methods to disable the Settings menu on your Windows 11 PC. Microsoft’s plan of sending the Control Panel into oblivion and replacing it with the Settings was always on the cards. However, the eleventh iteration of the OS has further cemented this fact. Some of the most important Control Panel functionalities are slowly but surely making their way over to the Settings menu, with the ability to uninstall apps being one of the most prominent ones.
However, this also means that the Settings menu has now more administrative-level access than ever before. The fact that it doesn’t require any elevated level of permission only makes the matter worse for the admins- especially if they are using a shared PC. This is because other users on that PC will have complete authority to tweak the system settings as they deem fit, either intentionally or otherwise. To prevent that from happening, you could take two different approaches.
Either hide the desired section from the Settings menu or hide the Settings menu on your Windows 11 PC altogher. Since we have already covered the former approach, let’s now make you aware of the instructions to do the latter. Moreover, if anyone tries to access the Settings menu after it has been disabled, then they will be greeted with the following message- “This operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator”.
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How to Disable the Settings Menu in Windows 11
We have listed two different methods through which you could get the job done- via Registry Editor and using Group Policy Editor. You may refer to the one that is in sync with your requirement.
Via Registry Editor
- Open Registry Editor from the Start Menu and head over to the below location
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
- Then right-click on the Explorer folder and select New > DWord (32-bit) Value.
- Name it NoControlPanel. Then double click to open it and set its Value data to 1.
- That’s it. The Settings menu is now disabled on your Windows 11 PC.
Via Group Policy Editor
- To begin with, enable the Group Policy Editor on your Windows 11 PC.
- Then launch Run via Windows+R and type in the below command to open the Group Policy Editor.
gpedit.msc
- After that, go to the following location from the left menu bar-
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel
- Then open the “Prohibit access to Control Panel and PC settings” policy from the right-hand side.
- Change its state to Enabled and then restart your PC for the policy to be implemented. That’s it.
How to Re-Enable the Settings Menu in Windows 11
If at any point in time you wish to revert the change, in other words, re-enable the Settings menu, then here’s what you need to do [refer to that method which you had initially used to disable the Settings menu].
- Using Registry Editor: Change the Value Data of NoControlPanel to 0
- Using Group Policy Editor: Change the state of the “Prohibit access to Control Panel and PC settings” policy to Not Configured.
That’s it. These were the two different methods to disable the Settings menu on your Windows 11 PC. If you have any queries concerning the aforementioned steps, do let us know in the comments. We will get back to you with a solution at the earliest.
