How to disable AutoRun & AutoPlay in Windows?

Whenever you insert an Audio CD or any removable media like external hard drives, USB drives, CompactFlash or SmartMedia drives on your Windows PC, the AutoPlay feature of Windows plays the songs on the CD or brings up a dialog giving you a number of options. If you regularly plug-in removable media into your PC, it is very irritating to go through this dialog every time.

A virus infected device when auto played, can cause damage to your system. You can completely remove the AutoPlay and AutoRun functionality on your Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP PC using either Group Policy Settings or Registry Editor.

How to disable AutoRun on Windows 7 and Windows Vista?

a. For all External Media

1. Log in to your Windows PC as an administrator.
2. Click Start, type Gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and press ENTER.
3. In the tree view on the left side panel, expand ‘Computer Configuration’ –> ‘Administrative Templates’ –>  ‘Windows Components’.

         Click on image to enlarge

4. Click Autoplay Policies and in the Details Pane (right side area), double-click ‘Turn off AutoPlay’.
5. In the Turn off AutoPlay window, select the radio button ‘Enabled’. After this selection, you will be able to choose between turning off Autoplay on all drives(including network drives) or only on removable media drives such as CD-ROM, USB drives etc.
6. Restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

b. For Selective Media

By following the above method, you will be able to completely stop the AutoPlay feature on your PC. However there may be times when you want Audio CDs to be played automatically but not any other software or exe files for security reasons. If you want to have complete control of what you would like enable or disable, then go to Control Panel –> AutoPlay in Windows 7 or Vista.

Here you can enable or disable AutoPlay for each of the media and devices like Audio CDs, DVDs, Pictures, Games, Software etc. You can choose from various actions like playing the CD automatically, opening folders, ask me every time, or simply take no action and set it as the default action for that media or device.

How to disable AutoRun for all devices on Windows XP Professional?

1. You need to be logged in to your PC as an administrator.
2. Click Start, type Gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and press ENTER.
3. Expand the tree view of Gpedit.msc to Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates.
4. In Administrative Templates, select ‘System’ .
5. In the right side pane, right-click on ‘Turn off Autoplay’ and choose ‘Properties’.
6. Select the radio button ‘Enabled’ and now you will be able to stop Autoplay on all drives by selecting ‘All Drives’ from the drop down menu.
7. Restart your PC.

How to disable AutoRun on Windows XP Home Edition?

Windows XP Home Edition does not include Gpedit.msc utility. There are two ways you can configure Auto Play features: the first one is to edit the corresponding registry entry and the second is to use TweakUI utility for Windows.

Method 1: Editing the Windows Registry

Take a backup of your Registry before you follow the steps described in this method. You need to be logged in to your PC as an administrator in order to make changes to the Windows Registry.
1. Go to  Start—> Run, type regedit in the Run box, and press Enter.
This will bring up the Windows registry editor.
2. Propagate to the registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutorun
3. Double-click on NoDriveTypeAutoRun to bring up the Edit dialog box for this registry key.
4. Depending on how you would like to configure the AutoPlay feature, you will have to enter a unique value as shown in the below table in the Value data text box.

0xFF: Disables AutoRun on all drives

0×1 or 0×80: Disables AutoRun on drives of unknown type

0×4: Disables AutoRun on removable drives

0×8: Disables AutoRun on fixed drives

0×10: Disables AutoRun on network drives

0×20: Disables AutoRun on CD-ROM drives

0×40: Disables AutoRun on RAM disks

5. Click OK, and then exit Registry Editor. Restart or log off and login your PC.

Method 2: Use TweakUI to configure AutoPlay

TweakUI is a free Microsoft PowerToy for a basic user which makes it easy to play around with Windows XP system settings. You can download TweakUI from Microsoft’s downloads page (the exe files are located on the right side of this page).
1. Run TweakUI.
2. Expand My Computer –> ‘AutoPlay’ in the tree view on the right side of TweakUI’s window.
3. Uncheck all desired drives for which you want to disable AutoPlay.

You can also disable Autoplay individually on CD/DVD drives or removable drives by selecting Types. (see screenshot below)

You can use Tweak UI to configure Auto Play for Windows 7 and Windows Vista as well.