Disable the Ease of Access button
Clicking the button would usually start Utilman.exe
, which in turn would display the Ease of Access options. You can override the executable, thus making the button useless.
Open an elevated command prompt.
Type or paste the following command, and press Enter:
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\Utilman.exe" /v "Debugger" /t REG_SZ /d "systray.exe" /f
Changes are applied immediately.
How it works
The Image File Execution Options
registry key was designed, among other things, to automatically launch a debugger when an application starts. While the debugger would start the application and attach, you can specify just any executable which will be run instead, thus overriding the original one.
What about systray.exe
? It's a little stub program which was first introduced with Windows 95, and used to handle the system notification icons. It's not really used any more in the newer Windows versions, and it was mostly kept for backward compatibility reasons. It has no user interface, and wouldn't do anything noticeable besides refreshing the notification area when started. Anything launched in the logon screen runs under NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM
, which has no desktop or taskbar, so nothing will happen.
Pros
- No system file or security permissions tweaking.
- Future-proof: works even if
authui.dll
or Utilman.exe
get updated.
- No third party software involved.
Cons
- Although the button won't do anything, it will still be visible/clickable.
- As a side effect, you won't be able to manually start the Utility Manager (
Utilman.exe
) elsewhere, nor the Screen Magnifier unless you use the /noutilman
switch (e.g. Magnify.exe /noutilman
).