Prevent running specified programs and applications in Windows 7

You might want to prevent or restrict users certain not to use some specific programs and applications in Microsoft Windows 7. You can do it in two ways: either via Group Policy Editor or via editing the registry. There is no doubt, that restricting via Group Policy Editor is far more easy than editing the registry, but unfortunately, Group Policy Editor is not accessible beyond Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 7 Enterprise. So, users other than those two versions have to follow the registry route.

Prevent running specified programs and applications in Windows 7 (Via Group Policy Editor: for Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Enterprise)

Click Start button, type ” Edit Group Policy ” and the corresponding program will appear on top of the list; hit Enter from keyboard and accept the security prompt :

Windows Group Policy Editor will launch. In the sided left pane, click on to expand User Configuration, Administrative Templates, and System :

In the right sided pane, right click on Don’t run specified Windows applications and click on Edit :

Click on the Enabled radio button to make it active. Then click Show button:

After Clicking Show button, this window will appear, just enter the name with exe extension in the list. We are showing the example of Windows Media Player :

This error window will pop up when the user will want to run the program (Windows Media Player in our example):

Prevent running specified programs and applications in Windows 7 (Via Registry Editor: for all versions of Windows 7)

Click Start button, type ” regedit “ (without the quotation marks) and hit Enter from key board:

In regedit, navigate to the location below :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

n the right pane of Explorer, right click on a empty space and click on New and DWORD (32-bit) Value:

Name it as DisallowRun and press Enter. Right click on DisallowRun and click on Modify. Enter its value as 1.

In the left pane, right click on Explorer and click on New and Key. Type DisallowRun and press Enter:

In the right sided pane of DisallowRun, right click on a empty space and click on New and String Value ; Type 1,2,3 and so on as many program you want to block:

Right Click each entry to Modify and enter the name with exe extension. We are showing the example of Windows Media Player :

The result will be same as we got via Group Policy Editor.