As you know, the promotion of any information resources, especially if they are purely advertising in nature, is a rather difficult task. Therefore, some developers go to all sorts of tricks by creating new search engines, which, from the point of view of computer security, are the most real malware. In this case, we are talking about the fact that some of these elements are built into browsers spontaneously.
At the same time, in the same “Chrome”, when you try to change the default search tool, the message “This parameter is enabled by the administrator” may appear.
The search engines that were installed initially are changing. But the saddest thing is that it’s almost impossible to disable the installed search using standard actions in the browser settings. So you can’t even try, anyway it will not give effect. But what then to do? First, let's figure out what this problem is generally related to.
What is the Google Chrome error “This setting is enabled by the administrator”?
Not to mention the huge variety of such malicious software, among all the "innovations", it is worth noting a certain search engine called yamdex.net.
It just has its main goal of full integration into the Chrome browser. And when you try to change the settings, a notification appears that in the Chrome settings This option is enabled by the administrator. How to remove the appearance of this message? Will have to apply the most cardinal methods. Antiviruses or determinants of advertising modules in this situation are powerless. But in Windows-systems you can use the built-in tools. This is a command console and a registry editor.
Why is the message: “This setting is enabled by the administrator” (Chrome Browser)?
In theory, if a user sees such a notification on his computer, it means only that a radical change in the settings at the administrator level has been made in the browser system. Do not confuse your own administrator account with the super administrator, who by default has a higher priority for changing system settings in Windows 7 and higher.
Most likely, many people know that to perform some actions in such systems, sometimes it is necessary to use the RMB menu with the choice of the application start line on behalf of the administrator. This is the very super administrator. But malware can act through such a record.
Antiviruses in this case do not work because they use a higher priority of actions, and for the most part, such programs have the status of trusted ones when they enter the system (this is absolutely enough for antivirus software to skip the threat).
Error recovery options
But we were somewhat distracted from the topic. Considering how to remove “this option is enabled by the administrator” in Chrome Browser, one could, of course, suggest using the Group Policy Editor, but standard procedures do not always work. In addition, actions with the command line and the registry are both faster and more efficient.
Thus, if the error "This option is enabled by the administrator" (Chrome suffers from this in the first place) appears, you will first have to register several commands in the console, and then check the settings in the system registry.
Command line usage
Now directly on the actions with the command console. We have a situation when the error “this parameter is enabled by the administrator” appears (Chrome is used or another browser, in this case it doesn’t matter):
- The command line must be called exclusively on behalf of the administrator, for example, through the main menu, from the "Explorer" (file cmd.exe in the System32 folder) or from the "Run" (Win + R) menu by entering the abbreviation cmd.
- The first is the command to delete group policy settings for all users: RD / S / Q "% WinDir% \ System32 \ GroupPolicyUsers" . After entering it, the Enter key is pressed.
- The second command, which removes the same parameters for the selected local user, looks like this: RD / S / Q "% WinDir% \ System32 \ GroupPolicy" . After it, Enter is pressed again.
- Finally, the command to completely update Group Policy settings is used: gpupdate / force .
After executing all three commands, you need to call the browser and see if the error "this option is enabled by the administrator" has disappeared (we just consider Chrome as an example).
System registry actions
If the problem has not been fixed, you will have to use the registry editor, which is called through the "Run" console by entering the regedit line. By the way, it is here that you can make maximum settings, which are unavailable for ordinary tools of Windows-systems.
Now the solution itself:
- In the editor, you need to pay attention to the HKLM branch and, going down the directory tree through SOFTWARE and Policies, find the Google folder in which the Chrome directory is located.
- In the right part of the editor, we are interested in two keys: DefaultSearchProviderEnabled and DefaultSearchProviderSearchURL .
- By double-clicking on each of them, an editing window is called up.
- The first parameter in the value column needs to be set to zero, for the second one, simply delete the entire contents of this field, in each case saving the changes by clicking the “OK” button.
- In order for the changes made to take effect, the entire system must be rebooted.
In theory, after this, the error message will no longer appear.
Yes, just in case, through the properties of the browser shortcut in the path to the executable file, check to see if something else has been added there. After the EXE extension, nothing else should be there. If something is still there, just delete everything unnecessary and save the changes.
Brief Summary
As you can see, the correction of such an unpleasant situation is nothing particularly complicated. Please note that both the command console and the registry editor should be run exclusively on behalf of the administrator. Otherwise, either the settings will not be applied due to the lack of the necessary rights, or you will receive the most common access denial.
Returning to group policies (the settings of which actually changed), it remains to note that it is impossible to perform actions on the command line by analogy in the editor itself. But the registry, in comparison with the policy editor, has a higher priority for changing system parameters. So, to use the settings of the policy editor in this case seems absolutely inexpedient.