How to remove or disable Ease of Access button on Windows 7 login screen

Question

Question refers to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

When I lock my computer I don't want people to be able to mess about with it, so would like the Ease of Access button (in the bottom left corner of the logon screen) to either be removed or disabled.

Does anybody know how to do this?

Thank you for your help :-)

Answer 1

The following steps will remove the button completely:

1. Create a backup of your Authui.dll in C:\Windows\System32
2. Open C:\Windows\System32\Authui.dll in a resource editor (PE Explorer)
3. Go the the UIFILE folder and double-click the 12400 XAML file
4. Find this text <if id="atom(Accessibility)">
5. Delete everything following that text - it should be 46 lines - stop at <if id="atom(ToggleTabletKeyboard)">
6. Save/close the file and do steps 4 and 5 for the 12401 and 12402 XAML files

If you feel uncomfortable modifying system files, there are also third-party apps that will disable the button.

Answer 2

An easy way to do this is to use Ease of Access Disabler 1.6 from http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Ease-of-Access-disabler.shtml. It should work on both Vista and win7.

Answer 3

Nick's answer will not work; it will crash your login and force you to do a sys restore/hdd pull. That method is only for 32bit operating systems, which OP's clearly is not.

To date there is no way of modifying the authui.dll for 64bit OS's.

Answer 4

Even if this is a little bit older, I found a way to remove the accessibility button on 64-bit systems.

1. Create a backup of your Authui.dll in C:\Windows\System32
2. ListOpen C:\Windows\System32\Authui.dll in a hex editor (like Hex Workshop)
3. List item
4. Find this text atom(Accessibility)
5. Shortly after the text above, you should find a text saying layoutpos="left"
6. Replace the "left" with "none"
7. Save authui.dll