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Disabling autoplay in Windows XP (without editing the registry) |
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Written by Chette Soriano
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Friday, 20 April 2007 |
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Whenever you hook up your USB thumb drive to your PC, you usually see a load of crap asking you how you want Windows to open your files. This is called autoplay.
In all my work with computers, I have only seen one person who actually used this, er, feature; which makes you wonder why Microsoft even enabled this by default in Windows XP installations.
Aside from relieving yourself from further annoyances, there is another reason why you would want to disable autoplay: leaving it enabled is actually a security risk. You probably have not been infected with the rootkit that lovingly came with some Sony CDs last year, but that is not a reason to wait. Disable it -- right about now.
- Go to Start > Run
- Type gpedit.msc & press Enter. The Group Policy window should appear.
- On the tree menu on the left, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System.
- On the right, look for Turn off Autoplay, & double click it.
- The Turn Off Autoplay Properties window should appear. From the dropdown in Turn off Autoplay on:, select which drives you want to disable it from (I would personally recommend you select All drives).
- Click OK.
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