Autorun can be useful but it can be dangerous. Remember yesterday article about plugging in hacked U3 smart drive and your computer is automatically compromised within seconds? That is only possible if autorun is enabled. Other than a hacked U3 smart drive, a hacker can infect a computer with trojan using a CD. Just program autorun.inf to load the trojan whenever it’s being autoplayed.

Besides security issues, autorun can be frustrating too. Have you ever encountered that when you load a very old CD or damaged/scratched CD, it will keep on trying to read and process autorun.inf file? The Windows will just freeze and you can’t do anything until you manually eject the disc.

I remembered many years ago when I was using a 3rd party user login software on Windows 98. It can be bypassed by simply loading a CD that has autorun.inf. (Maybe I was using a lousy windows 98 login software) So no matter which version of Windows you’re using, it is always good to disable CD autoplay on Windows.

Unfortunately Windows doesn’t provide a simple way for you to enable or disable automatically running CD-ROMs. I will show you 2 ways, the manual and automatic way to disable autorun on Windows.

There’s a trick where you can stop autorun CD in Windows by pressing a key. Just press the SHIFT key and hold the key for a while when you load a CD.
SHIFT key to disable autorun
This is also useful for U3 smart drives if you don’t want it to automatically run the U3 launchpad.

To MANUALLY and permanently enable or disable automatically running CD-ROMs, you must edit the registry:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom
3. To disable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 0 (zero). To enable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 1.
Disable CD autoplay in Windows
4. Restart your computer.

If you don’t like to mess around with your Registry or don’t know how, use this easy tool called AutoPlayConfig to easily help you enable or disable Autoplay on Windows.
Disable CD AutoPlay Tool
The program is free and easy to use. One click to check your Autoplay settings, another to Enable or Disable Autoplay.

[ Download AutoPlayConfig ]

Note: If you’d to re-enable CD autoplay but it doesn’t work, you might want to check two other registry keys that can affect this functionality. Make sure that both values is “0×00000095”
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Value: NoDriveTypeAutoRun = 0×00000095

HKU\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Value: NoDriveTypeAutoRun = 0×00000095

[tags]autorun, autoplay, security, windows, cdrom[/tags]