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16 Responses for "How To Easily Disable CD or DVD Auto Eject in Windows Vista"

1. Mustansir March 15th, 2008 at 3:12 am 1

   though I haven\’t tried vista yet but this seems like a problem any every day user could face using vista, will note it for future purposes..

2. Benny Bottema March 16th, 2008 at 9:24 pm 2

   Ha, thanks for sharing this, I\’ve been annoyed by the same problem since I have Vista (or my new case, which I got at the same time, not sure if XP didn\’t also have this).

   I hadn\’t actually thought about disabling my DVD drive, the thought just didn\’t occur to me. And I\’m dropping DevCon in a .bat file in my winmenu.

3. Timo Beil March 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 am 3

   Hi Raymond! Thanks for the post! Yeah, sometimes disabling the device is the only way you can go. By the way if your aim is to \’protect\’ your system as a part of a parental control you may just want to look at this nice tool http://tk.ms11.net/ that just disables the keyboard, CD-ROM door etc. By the way it\’s worth saying that devcon requires the person who runs it to have administrative privileges as that\’s the only way you can unload the device driver by default. Being an admin I frequently needed something to lock down or completely disable some types of devices. The complexity of managing it in a domain environment is that you have always to be able to run your all your lockdown processes connected with the information available from Active Directory. That\’s the local per-computer setting which is generally a no-go when you have to handle disabling devices for a roaming user. The complicated thing lies in the fact that the term roaming is generally thought on a simple environment settings basis. You can make your users\’ profile folder roamed, providing users with access to My documents folder from any place within your domain (that’s from any computer joined to the domain you run). So how to disable the device for a domain user? I used to use a administrative template http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555324 simply disabling the device by setting the Start parameter located in the SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\Cdrom key to value of 4. But this just disables the cd-rom.sys driver and that\’s it. Theoretically it comes useful when you want to implement a device usage policy for your users. However I found that it turns out to be of no use for implementing a dynamic device security policy that can scale down to a specific needs. It\’s not a secret that when you deal with corporate environment the most complicated thing is to find is a plan that will allow you to cover most device usage situations. I used to do the following. I used to create a general policy that defines settings effective throughout the whole enterprise. Then I had been adding additional policies that were being applied over those general settings by using group policy precedence http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/274e614e-f515-4b80-b794-fe09b5c21bad1033.mspx and security filtering when it was needed to apply those settings specifically for a particular user. Sometimes applying a loopback policy comes useful when it\’s needed to limit User configuration settings to be applied to user working only on those machines contained in the OU that your policy is linked to. Hence it makes no use to distinguish computer configuration settings particularly as all the ado here goes around user configuration settings applied on a per-computer basis filtering the policy our from being applied to a user working on a computer not contained within that particular OU. The main thing you should keep in mind when working with loopback policy processing is that enabling or disabling it only affects the User configuration section of the GPO leaving the Computer configuration section settings applied the same way with no regard for the setting being enabled or not. But it usually becomes more demanding applying device lockdown settings based on other criteria such as computer IP address, user membership, user environment, etc. A surplus here is the fact that you also have your device lockdown settings to be applied based on those criteria specified about and on the device type AND sometimes device ID criteria. Here\’s where neither the administrative template nor disabling device directly through disabling the device by locking down access for the SYSTEM account to the particular INF file help you much. Because then you need to disable/enable a write protection only thus having to set the WriteProtect parameter to 1 (you can created in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\StorageDevicePolicies key). The list of cases can be expanded. So I finally came to the assumption that such an administrative task should only be solved centrally so that I can control everything from one place. There are number of options existing here including some cheap and sometimes free tools that only do what I described above. There are other ones that use extensive scripting like remoting in PowerShell and so on. But I liked the desktop management tool from Scriptlogic. In Desktop Authority there\’s a separate configuration option to define device lockdown policy http://www.scriptlogic.com/desktop-authority-usb-device-lockdown.asp
   filtering device down to a device serial number and USB device VIDs and PIDs (the strings you may find in the INF file for the device like say VID_XXXX&PID_XXXX.DEVICEDESC=\”USB HOTPLUG GIGASTORAGE\”). The best thing is the ease of use. If don\’t know the VIDs and PIDs myself. I just can scan the device inventory right from within the tool and select the one I need to block access for from the list. I generally just build a list of devices that are permitted for use and import the list into the tool. Nice that I can define ALLOW/DENY like it\’s generally used to be with security policies. I then define environment options that determine where the blocking should be taking place for and apply device access selecting whether I want allow a read USB access or allow write access only for CD/DVD burners. But the best thing I like is blocking WI-FI. You set a general guest account and block WI-FI for it while leaving it fully accessible for the allowed personnel.

4. mark May 27th, 2008 at 9:37 am 4

   Thanks for your article,my problem is not the auto eject but how to stop the dvd/cd icon appearing every time i use the dvd-cd player,i know you can just delete them but i would like to stop them appearing full stop any ideas thanks for your time.

5. Stephen July 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm 5

   There is a way. If you don’t use Vista’s built in CD burning facility, disabling it will also remove this feature.

   Under Vista Business and Ultimate, run gpedit.msc, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer and enable the “Remove CD burning features” option. I don’t know how to do it on Home versions though.

6. John Murray October 12th, 2008 at 10:06 pm 6

   You are joking, right?

   You call this a work around? This is more of a hastle than the initial problem, having to run a batch file everytime I want to use my DVD drive.

7. abah October 24th, 2008 at 12:21 pm 7

   thankyou for your comment

8. chaithanya March 24th, 2009 at 1:18 pm 8

   in my notification area network icon is closing automaticaly can i know any solution for it.
   It u know plsssss send it to my mail id chaithanya_chaithu1@yahoo.co.in
   i will be very greatfull to u.

9. Joel P. April 20th, 2009 at 2:09 pm 9

   Just go to device manager-click on CD-DVD drive-right click on the -CD-DVD driver and click uninstall and click OK.Reboot the system for the changes to take effet.Hope it will help correct auto eject of the CD-DVD drive.

10. salman akhtar May 10th, 2009 at 2:14 am 10

    this is lsimple way for disable for cd drive are dvd drive ……………use simply……….

11. em August 13th, 2009 at 2:33 am 11

    Not working on Windows 7…

12. em August 13th, 2009 at 3:13 am 12

    This tool can be found in WDK on MS downloads… it’s a 600 MB ISO image.

    It didn’t work for me because I was using the x86 version on a 64-bit OS… however, the rescan feature that I use to fix the Catalyst/EDID problem that didn’t detected my right display refresh rate sometimes did work.

    Just now I check to see it there was an amd64 version and yes, this one disables my drives.

    To get the right DevCon you, just download that 600 MB iso, you don’t have to install it, just extract from WDK folder the cab file setuptools_x86fre_cab001.cab or setuptools_x64fre_cab001.cab if on 64-bit OS.
    Now from one of those cabs extract _devcon.exe_00000, rename it to devcon.exe and place it in Windows\system32.

    You can google on how you can create a right click context option for disabling and enabling the device.

    What I find useful is the restart feature that lets me refresh a device’s icon and context auto-play options if they persist even when a new disk is in the drive.

13. tulus Kiswidagda September 4th, 2009 at 8:47 am 13

    When I insert a dvd into dvd room, then click dvd room drive, directly it ejects. So I never play dvds.
    Help me.

14. Dave October 20th, 2009 at 5:49 am 14

    Just found this great tool, thanks for publishing about it. My problem is I am using it in a case where I have two cards with identical Hardware IDs, can I use anything else to identify the device I’d like to enable/disable?

15. TB October 24th, 2009 at 6:26 am 15

    Tx Stephen, turning off the burn to CD option works like a charm. Quite unbelievable that this is the root cause. Didn’t like this option anyway and didn’t know how to turn it off.

16. _IRIX October 24th, 2009 at 7:44 am 16

    There is an easy option via gpedit.msc
    Navigate to “user configuration>administrative tempaltes>windows components>windows explorer> THEN on the right pane click “Remove CD Burning Features” set it to “ENABLED” to disable the annoying eject. Then reboot.
    Cheers!