One of our readers has asked a way to disable “Log off” on Windows 7 Start menu. Windows 7 doesn’t allow you remove log off entry from Windows 7 start menu easily. You need to either play with Windows registry or Local Group Policy to make this happen.
If you are running Windows 7 Professional or ultimate, you can remove log off entry via Group Policy. But Windows 7 Home Basic and Home Premium editions don’t come with Group Policy editor. So you need to disable the entry via Windows registry.
Method 1- Disable Log off entry on Windows 7 Start menu via Group Policy:
1. Open Group Policy editor by typing gpedit.msc in Start menu search field and then hitting enter.
2. In Group Policy editor, navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. In the right pane, locate the entry named Remove Logoff on the Start Menu.
4. Double-click on the entry and then check Enabled option.
5. Click Apply button to save setting.
Method 2- Disable Log off entry on Windows 7 Start menu via registry:
1. Download remove logoff registry file from.
2. Double-click on the registry file and click Yes for the confirmation message.
3. Reboot your machine to see the change.
Method 3-Remove logoff entry from Windows 7 Start menu via registry (manual way):
1. Type regedit in Start menu search box and then hit enter to launch Windows Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
3. In the right-pane, create a new DWORD value named StartMenuLogOff and set it’s value to 1.
4. Close the registry editor and reboot your PC.
5. You are done.
This made me mad. I used exact this policy (and some others), but the Logoff button was still there and working. It was the first visible button.
I found out, that applying my policies step-by-step somehow kept the logoff button.
When I then changed the selection which button to show in start menu via start menu settings, I saw an empty/blank option in startmenu options. Changing that to one of the only 2 available selections removed the Logoff Button from startmenu and btw. there was no longer an invisible selection option and logoff was greyed out.
I think there is minor bug in the group policy processing where under special circumstances group policies try to disable the Logoff button while it is the selected item and that might not work. I have to investigate that later.