Disable Windows 10 Web Search

 I had a need to disable the web search results in Windows 10 for a limited user. These two links were helpful:

• https://superuser.com/questions/1557948/windows-10-disable-internet-in-search
• https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-find-a-users-security-identifier-sid-in-windows-2625149

Adding the Registry key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER works for the current user:

1. Open regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer (create the Explorer key if it doesn't already exist).
3. Create a DWORD value named DisableSearchBoxSuggestions and set it to 1.
4. Restart your computer (or kill and restart all Explorer.exe process instances).

However, a limited user does not have permission to add registry keys. So, while logged in as an administrator, use this to show the SID for each user on the machine:

C:\>wmic useraccount get name,sid

That will give you the SID of each user. You can then look in HKEY_USERS to find their hive and create the key; however, they will only show up in HKEY_USERS if they are currently logged in to the computer. So switch to that limited user and login, then switch back to the administrator user and go into HKEY_USERS and find their SID, then create the DisableSearchBoxSuggestions as shown above.