How To Enable and Access Disabled Grayed Out Buttons, Windows and Checkboxes

There are times you get very disappointed. Sometimes Windows operating system got corrupted and for don’t know what reason some buttons has been disabled and unable to access. Would you spend hours reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling software just because of a disabled grayed out button? Here’s another scenario. In an office that has Symantec Antivirus Corporate edition installed, the administrator could lock some of the features to prevent you from changing its configuration. You can see at the image below that LiveUpdate button has been locked and grayed out.

However, you can now enable and access disabled grayed out buttons, windows, check boxes and even drop down menu with useful little tool.

Before you read the rest of this article, I’d like to stress that these tools should NOT be used to hack or enable restricted feature in shareware. Well, you should know what’s right and what’s wrong. Here are two tools that can enable disabled (grayed out) windows, buttons etc.

1. TurnItOn!

This tool lets you enable any kind of disabled control, letting you check, press and edit what you need. There’s no need to install this tool. Simply download, extract and run TurnItOn.exe. It is also portable. To use this tool, you need to drag the “drag me” label over the disabled control and release the mouse. The “Text” list will contain all the handles to the controls under the mouse. The first of these will be transferred to the “Handle finder” window. Pressing the “enable” button will do the job. Depending on the structure of the window you’re enabling, you may need to disable the “Enhanced P.W. search” function. If “Text” window contains different controls, just double click the one you need to enable to transfer it to the “Handle finder” window.

I tried to enable some grayed out button in Windows XP but it did not work. However, the author of this tool managed to enable changing of computer name button at System Properties. Although he managed to access the computer name change button from a limited user account, he still couldn’t save the changes because he doesn’t have enough privileges to do that. All he got was an error that says “The following error occurred attempting to change the computer name to “NewName” Access is denied.” I then tried on a software that has restriction. I’ve blurred out the name of the software to protect the program from being abused. As you can see the animation below, the Repair button is disabled and grayed out. I then use TurnItOn to enable to Repair button. (I am not encouraging hacking of restricted shareware features but just to show you the proof of concept)

[ Download TurnItOn ]

2. DM2 with WinEnable plugin

DM2 provides several Windows enhancements that may help in every-day work. One of the nicest and most popular features of DM2 is minimizing windows to floating icons® (unique feature!) freeing both task bar and tray bar space. Moreover, DM2 can manipulate windows in various ways: minimize to tray, make them standing always on-top over all other windows, roll to caption, resize, align to screen borders, hide, set the opacity etc. DM2 also helps with Open/Save dialog boxes, by providing user-defined menu with favorites and recent files and folders. Plenty of program’s settings options will satisfy most of requirements.

To use DM2 to enable disabled windows and menu, you’ll have to set a hotkey to activate WinEnable plugin. Run DM2, go to Hotkey and click the Add button. Press any key on your keyboard to set that as the hotkey to enable WinEnable. Then click the Command drop down menu and select Toggle WinEnable Module (Plugin). Click Save. Now try pressing the Hotkey which you just set to activate WinEnable and click on any grayed out button. You’ll be surprised that IT WORKS!! Many thanks to Mojo for sharing.

[ Download DM2 ]