Registry variables


In multi-user environment it may be important to disable access to some of WinRAR functions for security reasons. If you need to do it, create Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WinRAR\Policy

or

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Policy

Key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE has a higher priority than in HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

This key may contain the following values:

Value name Value type Description
Benchmark DWORD If set to 0, disables "Benchmark" command. In multi-user environment "Benchmark" command might abuse shared computational resources.
MaxDictA, MaxDictE DWORD If set to non-zero, define the maximum allowed dictionary size in gigabytes for archiving (MaxDictA) and extraction (MaxDictE). If these variables are smaller than corresponding values defined in WinRAR interface, they override interface values.
Menu DWORD If set to 0, disables WinRAR main menu.
NoDrives DWORD Bit mask to hide one or more drives. Set it to 1 to hide A:, 2 for B:, 4 for C: and so on. Multiple drives are allowed. For example, decimal 12 (4 + 8) will hide C: and D: drives. This value is combined with NoDrives value in "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" Registry subkey of HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE root keys.
OrgPasswords DWORD If set to 0, access to "Organize passwords" dialog is disabled. It does not disable access to passwords already stored in this dialog, so you may need to delete them before setting OrgPasswords variable.
Password DWORD If set to 0, disables change of archiving password. It may help to avoid encrypting of important data.
Settings DWORD If set to 0, disables "Settings" dialog, "Settings/Import and export" submenu commands and toolbar context menu.
Shutdown DWORD If set to 0, disables "When done" archiving option, so a user cannot shut down, sleep, hibernate or restart PC.

It might be necessary to restart WinRAR after policy change. Policy key does not affect the console RAR (rar.exe file), so for better security in multi-user environment you may need to delete Rar.exe and keep only WinRAR.exe.

Also you can override the location of %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder, specifying a new path to WinRAR supplementary files in string value "AppData" of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Paths Registry key.