Disabling smart card reader

[spcaine]

Hi

I'm looking for a group policy to disable the smart card reader on an XP workstation. Anyone point me in the right direction please ?

[FN-GM]

Not sure that you can by GPO. I just ignore them as the user can't do much with them

[TheScarfedOne]

You could use USB Drive letter manager, which is a MSI install - more often used to force use of certain drive letters or Card Readers and USB pens. You could set it not to use any letter - effectively disabling it.

[Michael]

You can enable/disable devices using 2008 R2 and Windows 7. It's not clear whether or not this would work with XP.

Computer Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Devices

If it's something hardware specific on a laptop running Windows 7 (for example), by installing RSAT you can easily add the hardware device or class this way. This is why I'm unsure whether or not it's possible with XP.

[MatthewL]

Can I ask why you want to disable it?

[spcaine]

Can I ask why you want to disable it?

Hi, because I dont want some of the users in specific OU's to access this device.