How to Prevent Automatic Installation of Hardware in Windows 2000

ID: Q241367

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

SUMMARY

This article describes how to require users to have administrator priveleges in Windows 2000 to add new hardware.

MORE INFORMATION

To increase security in Windows 2000, you may want to limit the number of users who can install hardware.

For devices to automatically install in the System context, the following criteria must be met:

The driver installation must not require a user interface.
All driver files must be present on the computer.
The driver package must be digitally signed.
No errors are returned from the first pass of installation.

While you cannot circumvent this process using a setting or a registry entry, you can cause one or more of the criteria in the list to be invalid to force the device installation into the User context. The easiest way to do this is to delete the Driver.cab file located in the %WINNTROOT%\Driver Cache\I386 folder. When you delete this cabinet file, you force the device installation out of the system context and into the user context. If the user is not a member of the local administrators group, they no longer have permissions to install hardware.

For additional information about administrator permissions in Windows 2000, please click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q219435 Non Administrator Permissions to Load and Unload Device Drivers

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbhw
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto