Recently a friend asked me how she could make her netbook’s hard drive inaccessible, because she needed to send it to the repair shop and she didn’t want anyone snooping around her personal data. The netbook had some external plastic failure, but it was still working fine, no problems at all with normal functioning. So, she asked me if I know any software program that she can use. I knew that she was running Windows XP on her netbook, so I gave her the next option that you too can find it very useful :
1. Go to Start > Run
2. On the Run box write gpedit.msc
3. A window will appear, called Group Policy. Go to Use Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer, there you will find ‘Prevent access to drives from My Computer‘.
4. Double click and another window appears
Check the Enabled button and on the combination box you can choose which drive or partition you want to restrict. I suggest you choose ‘Restrict all drives‘. After that you just click OK.
If you try access the drives when the restriction is enabled, you wouldn’t be able to and you will get the next message
To make the drives accessible again, just reverse the steps.