AutoRun is the functionality that enables a CD-ROM drive or a fixed drive to specify a program or document to be started immediately upon the connection of the drive. Autorun has been designed not to work on removable drives such as USB flash drives, as these drives are much more readily infected and passed around to other computers.
He wrote that Autorun is turned on by default, which is, strictly speaking, not true. For example, neither Windows XP SP2 nor SP3 automatically run a program on a USB flash drive. Nick Brown's solution requires updating the registry.
However, Autoplay does not need or depend on the autorun.inf file (Autorun does). Autoplay was a misnomer from the get-go, the only thing that happens automatically is the presentation of the Autoplay window. A better name would have been AutoDetect as the automatic processing is limited to detecting file types.
And since that key, er, does not exist, it's as if AUTORUN.INF is completely empty, and so nothing autoruns, and nothing is added to the Explorer double-click action. Result: worms cannot get in - unless you start double-clicking executables to see what they do ...
AutoRun is the functionality that enables a CD-ROM drive or a fixed drive to specify a program or document to be started immediately upon the connection of the drive. Autorun has been designed not to work on removable drives such as USB flash drives, as these drives are much more readily infected and passed around to other computers.
open REGEDIT and navigate down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionIniFileMapping. There will be a subkey ("folder") called Autorun.inf. Delete it.
You delete a subkey in the registry by right clicking on it and selecting Delete from the popup menu.
When Autoplay is enabled, Windows examines a newly inserted thingy (removable media) and offers a choice of programs to process the various types of files it finds. Autoplay looks for an autorun.inf file too. As we saw in my initial posting, the first Autoplay option can be controlled by directives in the autorun.inf file (this explains the first option in the screen shot above). However, Autoplay does not need or depend on the autorun.inf file (Autorun does).
In XP: Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore. Click on the radio button to "Create a restore point" -> enter any description (a good example might be "before zapping the registry to disable autrun") then click on the Create button. It should take less than 10 seconds.
Although, at times, flash drive resident software can run by itself ( think U3 flash drives) without any action on the part of the computer user (other than inserting the USB flash drive) the more normal case is that a person has to be tricked. My first posting on this topic has a sample autorun.inf file that safely illustrates three of these tricks, and you can download this file to test how well your PC is defended from inadvertently running software off the flash drive. Odds are that any Windows computer will be susceptible to at least one of the tricks.
He wrote that Autorun is turned on by default, which is, strictly speaking, not true. For example, neither Windows XP SP2 nor SP3 automatically run a program on a USB flash drive.