We would like to prevent USB access to machines (primarily Windows XP, 2003 machines) so that it would not be possible for employees to copy anything from the disk to a pen drive.
6 Answers
You can do this using Group Policy Preferences.
See here for more info.

- 15,473
- 12
- 53
- 79
At my current job, we use Lumension Endpoint Security (http://www.lumension.com/). It is annoying as hell, which is exactly what it is supposed to do, so yes, it works well.

- 1,063
- 5
- 12
- 24
You can disable USB ports in Device Manager, but it will affect administrators as well.

- 1,677
- 1
- 11
- 15
-
thats fine with us – user42891 May 12 '10 at 09:22
I would have said disabling USB ports too, but bear in tmind if your mouse/keyboard/webcam are usb this will disable them too.

- 2,964
- 8
- 41
- 52
-
i don't want my other devices to get affected with this, thanks for the hint – user42891 May 21 '10 at 13:31
I used devicelock in the past, it does the job but it was a bit tricky to setup and maintein

- 1,031
- 2
- 15
- 33
Microsoft provides an Administrative template to restrict USB drives on 2003/XP machines. To make the administrative template available in Group Policy Management, you will need to paste the administrative template text into a "RestrictDrives.adm" file, save it, and follow the instructions under the links in the "More Information" section.

- 14,200
- 4
- 53
- 95