Windows 8 - Disable Charms Bar

Question

I'm currently working to disable and lockdown tablets, and am having a hell of a time getting this part disabled. On a touch screen tablet, running windows 8, swiping from the right side of the screen will bring up a charms bar. I want this disabled.

I know this is controlled by a registry value (or multiple values) somewhere, but can't locate them. And I've researched this for hours and hours.

Just a heads up, this has nothing to do with CharmBarHints or the Metro Switcher. This also has nothing to do with my mouse's hardware options. Please, don't give me a fix for a PC running windows 8 that is using a touchpad, it's not the same.

I'm just trying to disable the charms bar for a tablet. Also, I know that windows 8.1 will contain a Kiosk Mode, however that will not be officially released until Oct 17th, and I will be shipping this fix out before then.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You should definitely try going to 1. "COntrol Panel"-> "Mouse" -> "Device Settings" tab-> "Settings" options -> Uncheck the "Enable Edge Swipes" option

Answer 2

Windows charms bar is operated by explorer.exe. So if your app can run without it then you can hack around it by first disabling the autorestart of explorer.exe via (run as administrator):

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "AutoRestartShell" /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Then the lines below represent my launch.bat - which works in the end as expected:

;; kill explorer (this disables all windows functionalities
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

;; start your kiosk app - should block the batch execution (so explorer.exe doesn't get executed at the end)
"\path\to\your\app.exe"

;; after you close both the app window and the opened chrome window relaunch explorer.exe to give back the functionality to windows
explorer.exe

I use the approach outlined above to let a keyboardless kiosk app run. Because with a keyboard you can still close the app with alt+f4.

Answer 3

Have you tried this method?

Navigate to the following registry key in Registry Editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>ImmersiveShell

Now go to

ImmersiveShell > New > Key from the context menu, and then name the new Key as EdgeUI.

Right-click the EdgeUI key, point to New, DWORD (32-bit) Value and then name the new DWORD as DisableCharmsHint.

Now double-click the newly created DWORD value, type 1 and click OK. You may also need to reboot Windows for the changes to come into effect.

Once done, it will disable both the top-right and bottom-right hot corners that reveal the Charms Bar.

Source: http://www.techattend.com/disable-charms-bar-in-windows-8-1/