On Windows XP/2003/Vista/ Windows 7 we can enable or disable webclient service using the following method.(In Windows Server 2003 webclient is disabled by default whereas in XP/Vista/Windows7 it is enabled by default i.e start type is set to Auto.
- Open Service configuration console(services.msc).
- Find webclient entry in the list of services displayed in the right side pane
- Double click on webclient entry. You will see a window like below
- Select Automatic/Manual/Disabled in the Startup type
- Click on Apply button
- Now you can see that Start button is active/inactive based on whether you have enabled/disabled the service.
To enable webclient service from command prompt you can simply run either of the following commands.
sc config webclient start= demand
or
sc config webclient start= auto
To disable webclient service from command line we can run the below command.
sc config webclient start= disabled
Any idea how to disable webclient through group policy?
There is no GP as such to disable webdav. The only way you can stop webdav usage is to disable webdav service on all the client systems through some automated script.
Make a custom ADM file to import into your group policy for setting the registry settings for startup of the service. Obviously also ensure clients are not local administrators so they can't restart that service.
Something like the following although I've not tested this particular config, I've created a few others that manipulate registry settings.
CLASS MACHINE
CATEGORY "Services"
POLICY "Disable WebDAV/WebClient Service (MRxDAV)"
EXPLAIN "Enabling this policy will allow the WebDAV/WebClient service (MRxDAV) to be disabled or returned to automatic."
KEYNAME "MachineSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesMRxDAV"
PART "Start" DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
DEFAULT "0"
VALUENAME "Start"
ITEMLIST
NAME "Automatic" NUMERIC 2
NAME "Disabled" NUMERIC 0 DEFAULT
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY
Thanks Evahn for letting us know about this. It will surely help people trying to disable webclient at domain level.