Computer FAQs & Tips

Autorun is a mechanism to run the program automatically without any user interactions. It usually used in media such as CD, DVD, USB Disk etc. Whenever a media is successfully attached or inserted to the PC, a tartget program will be executed automatically. Most of you might be familiar with installation media, it usually bring up the welcome screen or the installation wizard as soon as you insert CD or DVD into the drive.

Basically Autorun is there to enable the conenience for user and give more controle to software vendor to bring up what want you to see when you instert/plug the media into your PC.
To find out more about what is Autorun, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorun

Now let’s look at it a bit closer. This feature could expose to a security threat where hacker or virus writer could take advantage of this to execute their file without user even know about it.

Autorun is enabled by default in Microsoft Windows and there’s no straight forward way to disable it (such as icon in control panel). However this is not the end of the story, it can be disable by editing the windows registry yourself or use a tool like TweakUI PowerToy from Microsoft

Disable autorun by editing registry:

1. Click Start
2. Click Run
3. Type regedit then press enter
4. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesCdrom
5. Double click on AutoRun
6. You will see a dialog popup with Value Data 1, change to 0

Disable autorun by using TweakUI PowerToy:

1. Open Tweak UI from where you installed it
2. Go to: My Computer > AutoPlay > Drives
3. Untick any drive you want to disable Autorun

Now you can have a peace of mind when insert/plug any media to your PC.