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Fix or remove Windows AutoPlay with CleanHandlers

by Brad Linder on February 27, 2008 at 02:00 PM

When you pop a CD or DVD or flash drive into your PC, odds are Windows brings up the AutoPlay menu asking if you'd like to burn a disc, watch a movie, or perform some other action. Or depending on your selections in the past, Windows may just automatically launch a program. But what if it wants to launch a program that you've since uninstalled?

CleanHandler is a utility that helps you remove or fix entries from the AutoPlay menu. There's no option for adding new programs to the AutoPlay menu. If your media player of choice doesn't support AutoPlay, there's not much CleanHandler can do. But it can clean up bad registry entries.

[via XFuture Blog

Tags: autoplay, cleanhandlers, freeware, registry

Comments

stevenFeb 27th 2008 4:15PM

Neutral

Just use TweakUI. It does this and much more.

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jfjbFeb 27th 2008 5:12PM

Neutral

right on, steven

Now, for the folks who:
- don't have Tweak UI
- don't want to download Tweak UI
- don't know how to download Tweak UI
- don't care about Tweak UI

... follow Tweak UI suggestion:
- open My Computer
- right-click the drive you want to customize
- select Properties
- select Autoplay
- select a content type, then chose an action for window to perform automatically
- repeat for any content type to modify
- when finished, click Apply or OK
- et voilà
- enjoy

Well, you can also get a computer without a CD or a DVD...

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stevenFeb 27th 2008 5:53PM

Neutral

I suppose my comment was a bit cryptic. :) The devil is in the details. It sounds more complicated than it is in TweakUI. It's definitely a addon you will not want to live without. But is it compatible with Vista? Not. Dealing with autorun issues is natively easier in Vista. Definitely don't install anything extra to do this. Just follow these instructions: hit the windows key, type "autoplay" into the search bar (no quotes), now just change software to "take no action". Do the same for any other media types you want.

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