Turn Off Auto Play on CD/DVD Drives and USB Storage in Windows XP and Windows7

Turn Off Auto Play on CD/DVD Drives and USB Storage in Windows XP and Windows7

Almost all versions of Windows operating system have a built in feature to automatically detect external storage e.g CD drives, DVD drives, removable USB storage or an external hard drive. Whenever you plug in a removable device, Windows starts scanning its files and pops in an autoplay dialog box.



The auto play dialog box in Windows shows you a list of options for actions you can take on the files that are stored in the removable storage device. If it’s an audio DVD, the auto play dialog box will provide an option “Play all media from this DVD”, which is sometimes very useful.

However, a lot of users find the autoplay options really annoying. Whenever you insert a CD, thumb drive or a DVD, Windows starts the auto play options which you may want to permanently turn off.

In this article, we will show you some simple steps using which you can disable autoplay options in Windows7 and Windows XP. After you turn off autoplay in Windows, you have to manually open the removable storage location and use the content thats stored there.

Turn off Autoplay Of CD/DVD and USB Drives in Windows XP

1. From the start Menu go to Run and type “regedit” to open Windows registry editor.

2. Select administrative templates in the left Pane. Under administrative templates, select system.

3. On the right pane, look for an option labelled “Turn off Autoplay”. Double click the option to enable it.

Turn off autoplay in Windows XP

Disable Autoplaying of USB drives in Windows XP

4. You can select only CD ROM drive or all drives.Then click ok.

Disabling autoplay for all drives will turn off autoplay for USB devices, external hard drives and other storage devices – your digital camera for example. If in any case you want to re enable the auto play features for a p[articular drive, follow the above method and choose “Disabled” in “turn off autoplay properties” settings panel.

Disable Autorun Feature In Windows 7

The steps to disable auorun in Windows7 is exactly the same as in Windows XP but in case you need the step by step instructions, we thought it would be wise to post it anyway. Here goes:

1. Click the Windows 7 start menu and type “gpedit.msc” in the search box. Then click gpedit in the search results pane to open the local group policy editor

2. On the left hand pane of local group policy editor, navigate to Administrative templates . Windows components . Autoplay policies and look for the option “Turn off autoplay” in the right pane.

3. Click enable and choose OK. That’s it, you have just disabled autoplay option in Windows7. Now Windows wont bother you with the autoplay dialog box whenever you insert a USB thumb drive, a CD or a DVD.