Raymond.CC Blog

In Windows XP, when you plug in an external USB hard drive, USB flash drive or even memory card, you’ll get a prompt that says “Windows can perform the same action each time you insert a disk or connect a device with this kind of file type: What do you want Windows to do?“.

You can open folder to view files, take no action and etc… If you check the “Always do the selected action” checkbox, Windows will perform the same action whenever you connect the same external USB disk. It works fine at first when all the files are intact but when I formatted and copied other types of files to the drive, the default action is useless.

You can easily restore the AutoPlay prompt with a few simple step.
1. Right click on the drive letter that is created by the external USB device
2. Select Properties
3. Go to AutoPlay tab
4. Select “Prompt me each time to choose an action” and click OK

The 4 easy steps above should be able to bring back the prompt the next time you plug in your USB flash drive. But there are many cases I’ve seen that this simple steps doesn’t work. This problem usually happens on Windows that has a lot of software installed and somehow corrupted the registry. If the method above doesn’t work, then you can try using this fix as it worked for me.


Microsoft has created a tool called “Microsoft AutoPlay Repair Wizard” to fix this problem. Some people call it AutoFix.exe or AutoFix. Microsoft AutoPlay Repair Wizard scans your computer devices to find defective AutoPlay settings and attempts to fix those it finds.

Many people tried this autofix tool and complaint that it didn’t work. Actually there is an extra step that needs to be done in order to bring back the autoplay dialog box. Here is how to use Microsoft AutoPlay Repair Wizard to repair the problems that is causing the AutoPlay dialog box from not appearing.

1. Plug in your external USB hard drive, USB flash drive or card reader
2. Download and run AutoFix.exe
3. Click Next
4. Make sure that both of the Global Checks are OK. If there are problems, click the Repair button

5. Choose the drive where AutoPlay is not working correctly and click Next
6. Make sure that all policies are OK, if not click the Repair button
7. Now try to reproduce the problem by unplugging and plugging it back.
8. Click the Repair button if found any Problems.
9. Click Next and Finish
10. Unplug your USB flash drive and restart computer
11. When Windows is booted up, plug in your USB flash drive. AutoPlay dialog box should appear.

If the AutoPlay dialog box still doesn’t appear after fixing it with Microsoft AutoPlay Repair Wizard, then please go through this step again. Right click on the drive letter that is created by the external USB device, select Properties, go to AutoPlay tab, Select “Prompt me each time to choose an action” and click OK.

There is another tool called AutoPlay Repair. It doesn’t really fix the AutoPlay dialog problem, but it can help you repair your AutoPlay handlers.

For example when you plug in your USB flash drive, the AutoPlay dialog box appears but it contains a lot of invalid entries on Windows XP’s autoplay sections. This usually happens after several uninstallation of media players applications. You can easily delete those invalid entries with AutoPlay Repair.

[ Download AutoPlay Repair ]