Vista: Disable DEP or NoExecute Protection to fix Explorer Crashing
Posted by Hack_Vista in Microsoft Vista
Some explorer crashes, especially in the early builds of vista, are due to DEP violations. Turn it off and see if it helps.
DEP or NoExecute Protection will be a vital part of vista security. During these early builds, however, it can lead to many explorer crashes.
If you are getting a lot of explorer crashes, disable it and see if it helps.
Disable DEP in Vista:
1. Click Start
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. Right Click on Command Prompt
5. Left click on Run as Administrator
6. Click the Allow button if it asks you for permission
7. Type or copy and paste this into the command prompt window:
bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
8. Hit enter and you should see the confirmation: Operation Completed Successfully
9. Reboot and DEP should be off.
The Conversation
Follow the reactions below and share your own thoughts.


October 13, 2008 at 5:33 am, help? said:
so how do I re-enable this? change it to alwayson?
May 22, 2009 at 2:51 am, orion said:
remember, first open the command prompt by “run as admin”. then type in bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx optin
November 05, 2009 at 6:00 am, Anonymous said:
What does this command do then “bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx optin”
Am I setting my DEP on again
November 09, 2008 at 3:02 am, Daniel said:
Is DEP the confirmation thing? if so it doesnt work, i cant get my damn homeworld 2 to work no nmatter what i do D:
January 11, 2010 at 1:02 am, Anonymous said:
the confirmation thing that always says Allow or Cancle, is UAC, and is a whole other ball of worms
November 09, 2008 at 4:37 pm, Anonymous said:
Pro-Tip: Doesn’t work with SP1
July 31, 2009 at 7:09 am, Anonymous said:
Doesn’t work with Service Pack 1?? THANK YOU SOOO MUCH, I couldnt figure out why this wouldn’t work.
November 13, 2008 at 8:54 am, stefano said:
vistax64 with intel processors, cannot disable DEP and trust me I have used every hack I could find on the net I need suggestions plz
November 01, 2009 at 9:53 pm, Anonymous said:
I have Vistax64 home premium and intel core 2 duo and dep does work as i can now play homeworld 2
November 24, 2008 at 4:51 pm, rainbowwwarrior said:
yeahhhhhhhh – it works ;o))))
thx a lot !
November 25, 2008 at 7:21 am, Abul said:
{WORKING FIX}
tried everything….. Mines fixed now, sympathys to all whose isnt …. My advice.. boot in safe mode, search for “system restore” choose a point taht it 1 week + from when it started to skrew up….and hopfully your as lucky as i was…and it fixes it. Good LUCK@!@!@$#$@$
November 30, 2008 at 11:43 am, Gerd said:
It does not work, my TurboCad prof 10.2 still does not work
January 10, 2009 at 8:40 pm, jojo said:
DEP doesn’t work at all
January 27, 2009 at 2:31 am, Mark said:
It’s about time MS runs you all over the place, took another to help get rid of there IE 8 Beta
Thanks you really helped me out
Mark
March 12, 2009 at 2:03 pm, Trevor Wainwright said:
I’ve DEP shutting down my spooler so that the printer does not work. I no longer get the message on start up but the spooler is always off. This in XP though. What has suddenly started this? I cannot get the spooler to start manually either. Bit of a drag as you can usually print your help before starting the fix, I have to write everything down!
March 13, 2009 at 5:30 pm, SRINIVAS said:
thnks u r awesome i was trying to solve this problem for so long days finally i got it solved
yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
April 05, 2009 at 8:18 am, Jamaico Tan said:
hi i really have problems on this one and i follow what you said already but it says there that bcedit.exe is not recognized as an internal or external command
please help me on this
it would really be a pleasure iof you can help me
May 02, 2009 at 2:33 am, m said:
bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
make sure its B C D edit
cheers
April 11, 2009 at 10:37 pm, Pla said:
Yeah. It works but be sure you run command prompt as admin.
May 15, 2009 at 7:53 am, XXXXX said:
/////I have tried to disable DEP a few times but when I enter the command it says “The boot configuration data store could not be opened , Access denied” Help Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/////
same problem here…..
August 16, 2009 at 12:53 am, Anonymous said:
You didn’t run it as admin, try again and follow directions better.
May 15, 2009 at 4:22 pm, Adnan said:
Not very useful. I did it but to no avail: caused more trouble. I reinstalled avgfree and ran a disc check on C drive which solved my problem.
May 17, 2009 at 9:55 pm, ef said:
hmm “no bcedit found”
May 22, 2009 at 2:50 am, orion said:
you missed the “d”. its bcdedit.exe
May 25, 2009 at 6:39 pm, laree said:
mine said the same thing
May 26, 2009 at 6:16 pm, craig said:
i know this might be an easy fix but i turned off DEP because it was blocking a program and the DEP is still stopping it from running. any ideas?
May 28, 2009 at 1:35 pm, joeh said:
I had same problem with Vista Home running IE8. I disabled Google Toolbar add-ons and all is OK now. (Right click Internet explorer, select start IE without Add-Ons – if this works you can then go to Manage Add-Ons and disable individual ones. I disabled the most recently intalled ones and by a process of elimination discovered that it was Google Toolbar and Google Findbar which were the cause of the problem)
November 29, 2009 at 11:37 pm, Anonymous said:
Thank you so much! You totally helped me fix my problem. I disable all Google items and then I was able to see the items on the websites I needed to see. No one else seemed able to help me. Thanks again!
May 29, 2009 at 10:52 am, Ali said:
i did that but nothing happened !!!!!
June 04, 2009 at 10:49 pm, MASF said:
Thank you it worked perfectly. God bles your soul.
June 05, 2009 at 5:23 pm, Zoey said:
I typed in the command in the command prompt and it disabled DEP but the program it kept blocking still doesn’t work. Do you know what I can do to get the program working?
June 05, 2009 at 8:06 pm, Ross Wilson said:
to reverse this do the same as above but type : bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx OptIn into the command window
June 09, 2009 at 11:42 pm, Jeff said:
When I run the command i get:
“The boot configuration could not be opened. The maximum number of secrets that may be stored in a single system has been exceeded.”
Any ideas on that?
February 09, 2010 at 10:35 pm, Anonymous said:
THATS WHAT IT SAYS WITH ME HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
June 14, 2009 at 10:38 pm, C said:
Thanx!!! Back up and running! Can get the job done now. I want to leave this off, What problems would I encounter,If any?
June 17, 2009 at 2:49 am, Robert said:
Thanks! This actually accomplished my intended task. The other 30 articles I read on this subject were complete crap. Again, thanks.
June 30, 2009 at 6:38 am, ??? said:
this does not work for me.
I always end up getting, access denied.
Can someone please help?!
July 31, 2009 at 7:14 am, Anonymous said:
Install SP2 and it should work.
July 10, 2009 at 3:54 pm, naxtor said:
it works fine
August 12, 2009 at 4:15 pm, Anonymous said:
how do i turn it on again?
September 08, 2009 at 6:20 pm, Anonymous said:
I disabled DEP as you described with bcdedit.exe command line entry. The problem was not solved and I cannot restart DEP with bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOn. So, now I sttil have the problem and no DEP support. What now?
September 26, 2009 at 4:14 pm, Anonymous said:
DEP is a bit of security from windows (thhat i find annoying because it closes all my fav apps all the time, i do have to restart app after diabling for program) that closes programs using to much memory, or something. When a program does something windows doesn’t like, DEP(data execution prevention) closes it.
November 05, 2009 at 5:56 am, Anonymous said:
Hiii,I did as it is and now it is working perfectly.But am shutting down by DEP for all the essential Windows programs….
Please let me know
November 07, 2009 at 11:26 pm, rhre;pf said:
right click the command prompt as admin right click>drop bar>open as admin then continue the process
November 17, 2009 at 10:31 am, Frankie said:
Turning it off still diddnt work, Im trying to play halo 2 and data execution keeps comming up when i start the game, i called microsoft and they diddnt help cause my warranty ran out, i checked other trobleshooting steps like running the game as admin. or chaging the compatibilty to xp sp2, but halo2 is for vista
i have a home built comp
it has vista premiun 32bit
dont remember wat the m/b is i know its an ecs
umm it has a intel core i5 2.66ghz quad
and corsair xms3 4gb ddr3 memory
320gb samsung hdd
his radeon hd 4670 1gbddr3 videocard
idk wat the problem is but it only does this to vista games like halo2 shadowrun gears of war crysis warhead, crysis works fine
December 01, 2009 at 2:23 pm, Anonymous said:
Is administrator go thre okay rebooted and it still doesent work dep is constantly greyed out with a tick in the box for enable. I am using internet explorer 8 with pack 2 for vista. I hate fucking dep…
December 02, 2009 at 3:01 am, Anonymous said:
FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO GO TO THE DEFAULT DEP!
1) Right click on cmd : Run as Administrator
2) type : bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx Optout
3) Restart pc
4) Everything back
5) DONT EVER TRY AGAIN the : nx [AlwaysOff OR AlwaysOn]
Thanks! I hope you all be alright!
January 07, 2010 at 11:46 pm, Donna said:
I cannot fix the Data execution prevention no matter what I do, my hubby can check his email without getting these notifications, from the same computer.
January 11, 2010 at 4:16 am, Donna said:
Thank you ChezzaX! I really appreciate your suggestion but I got it fixed, had to pay for it (charge) it took two days of chatting with the East Indians but it turned out to be Internet Explorer 8, This computer, an HP came with Explorer 7 and because of my constant and annoying updates, I downloaded Explorer 8, Big mistake! DEP is such a pain, there are many suggestions for fixes on here, hope anyone else chooses the right one.
January 11, 2010 at 2:09 am, Anonymous said:
when you get to the CMD on the accessories list dont click on to it, instead do a right click and select to rum CMD as an administrator- then copy and paste as per point 7 above-
Running CMD as a “User” does not give the the permissions you need!
Chez
June 06, 2010 at 7:45 pm, Tina said:
Thank you! I always forget how to do that “run as administrator” thing and forget that IT’s the thing causing the secondary problem! Very grateful!
October 14, 2010 at 7:15 pm, Captainbill0624 said:
YEPER THAT WORKED THANKS CHEZ….
February 14, 2011 at 12:40 am, Christina said:
thanks a lot…after browsing all the topics your suggestion was the best and worked
February 14, 2011 at 1:24 am, Anonymous said:
Glad to be of help!!
Kind Regards
Cheryl D Brewster
January 13, 2010 at 4:24 pm, Anonymous said:
This does not work. Unknown command
February 20, 2010 at 10:34 pm, Emonk said:
that doesn’t work!! IE:made my PC crash had to reinstall my OS
February 21, 2010 at 12:31 am, Anonymous said:
Sorry, try some more solutions on this page….Their are many more high tech people than what I am. I do feel your pain though.
March 12, 2010 at 6:36 pm, Anonymous said:
I don’t know the admin password !
May 17, 2010 at 12:17 am, guy from place said:
mine says i exceeded max number of secrets for my sustem whats that mean?
June 22, 2010 at 8:03 pm, Jessica said:
I still need more help. I It turned it off, but my problem is still happening, now it;s just not popping up that data execution prevention did it. It happens when I am on my school website and need to post something, it won’t open up anything unless it comes in a new tab. Now that I turned DEP off, internet just stops working…
I really need this for school. Please help
July 12, 2010 at 7:59 pm, Neil68hatcher said:
What if access is denied
August 10, 2010 at 8:43 am, bensherma said:
Because of this i cant pley any of my computer games…
the moment i start the game executable it says setup has stop working…
ok i will try it out and get back u the feed back in case it works for me…
August 26, 2010 at 7:58 am, Anonymous said:
I am using windows vista home edition. Recently I upgraded Internet Explorer. Many windows are opened while browsing various web sites and if any one window is closed by me, instantly all other opened windows are closed.
I believe it is part of DEP program introduced by Microsoft. I executed your command as administrator and rebooted and the problem is solved.Thanks for the help. Any program should not override user options. Beyond the intendented purpose of the program it becomes a pain in the neck for the user.
Sebastian Koylerian
September 25, 2010 at 7:33 pm, X--kATSUMI said:
SAME
September 27, 2010 at 1:36 am, hpyfmly said:
I know this was some time ago, but I just did a clean install on new hard drive…I kept getting the error, followed your instructions and now my computer won’t boot up – not even in safe mode. I am running a “Pre-boot system assessment”. Any suggestions? By the way, I JUST got done updating the Vista Service Pack 1 which I see from others posts that it’s not compatible….wish I would have seen that sooner.
November 25, 2010 at 5:22 pm, Dave said:
dont work. but please create and post a new code to take off this stupid DEP. thanx.. im sick of it and adobe crashing my ie8
February 10, 2011 at 5:54 am, Tannernascar said:
how do you turn it back on?
February 14, 2011 at 1:41 am, SwordWrath said:
when i disable dep and reboot (it said it was successful) it still closes programs. i cant find anything on the internet. help!
March 02, 2011 at 9:05 pm, Leloucharvin said:
you cant even copy that so i cant do it
April 08, 2011 at 9:28 pm, eric hunter said:
right click on the command prompt icon and click Run As Administrator. click, then type bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff then go to start menu and restart it should be fine
June 04, 2011 at 5:10 pm, flintstone said:
LOVE U man thanks a lot… works!!
May 14, 2012 at 4:51 pm, Martin said:
DEP SUCKS!
THANKS, NICE GUIDE! (y)