The link you used contains instructions from the Cornell University Tech Department probably intended for users of their computers.
The easiest way to disable Autorun on a specific drive is to download and use
Tweak UI PowerToy.
- After installation, launch Tweak UI, double-click on My Computer in the tree menu on the left, then click on AutoPlay > Drives. This will allow you to change the system settings for AutoPlay/autorun.
- Uncheck the drives you want to disable AutoPlay on and click on Apply.
- Next, click on the Types in the left tree. This allows you to control whether Autoplay is enabled for CD and DVD drives and removable drives. You may need to restart Tweak UI if it closes after step 2.
- Uncheck the box to disable Autoplay for a particular type of drive.
- Click Apply.
If needed, see
Disable Autorun/AutoPlay in XP with Tweak UI" for instructions with screenshots.
Note: When Autorun is disabled, double-clicking a drive which has autorun.inf in its root directory may still activate Autorun so be careful. Disabling autorun/autoplay does not prevent you from accessing your media sources. They are still available by opening My Computer and accessing the source drive (CD, DVD, USB or external hard drive). Pictures on a camera can still be accessed through My Pictures and selecting "Get Pictures" from a scanner or camera. Media can be accessed via the program you normally use it with such as music CDs via Media Player, blank CDs via burning software, image handling software provided with the camera. I strongly recommend you leave the autorun feature disabled and get into the habit of accessing your media devices manually.If using Windows
Vista, please refer to:
However,
disabling AutoRun is not enough. See Scott Dunn's
One quick trick prevents AutoRun attacks. For most novice users, the easiest way to inoculate a USB Flash Drive is to create a
Read-only folder on the drive named autorun.inf and place a small file inside or just use
Flash_Disinfector which does the same thing for you. Flash_Disinfector is a specialized fix tool created by sUBs to remove infections that load an autorun.inf file on removable media. As part of its routine, this tool will create a hidden folder named autorun.inf in each partition and every USB drive that was plugged in when you run it.
Do not delete this folder...it will help protect your drives from future infection by keeping the autorun file from being installed on the root drive and running other malicious files.
Alternatively, you can download and use
Panda USB Vaccine. Computer Vaccination will prevent any AutoRun file from running, regardless of whether the removable device is infected or not. USB Vaccination disables the autorun file so it cannot be read, modified or replaced by malicious code. The
Panda Resarch Blog advises that once USB drives have been vaccinated, they
cannot be reversed except with a format. If you do this, be sure to back up your data files first or they will be lost during the formatting process.
Finally, always scan USB Flash Drives after they have been used in other computer systems, even your own. An easy way to do this is to download "
ClamWin Portable Antivirus", put it on your USB Flash Drive, update its definition files and perform a scan.
Edited by quietman7, 09 April 2009 - 08:59 AM.