July 5, 2008 10:48pm pdt

1. honmapog 258,827
2. RobWill 235,123
3. tsmvp 228,329
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7. lnkevin 179,425
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10. garycase 157,266
11. BLipman 143,805
12. dovidmichel 134,877
13. iamthecr... 117,610
14. leew 103,802
15. meyersd 96,712

1. rindi 1,521,803
2. RobWill 1,149,480
3. andyalder 1,002,297
4. nobus 789,375
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11. SysExpert 555,548
12. mgcIT 530,379
13. PUNKY 456,261
14. tsmvp 370,867
15. BLipman 341,667

04.14.2004 at 08:56AM PDT, ID: 20953875

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7.2

Enabling Autorun on USB flash Drive

Zone: Hard Drives & Storage

Tags: autorun, usb, drive, flash

How do I automatically execute a program when a usb pen drive is plugged into the PC. I cannot install any software on the machine before plugging in the usb drive.

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Question Stats

Zone: Storage

Question Asked By: d_hari

Solution Provided By: Callandor

Participating Experts: 15

Solution Grade: B

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04.14.2004 at 10:43AM PDT, ID: 10825838

Rank: Guru

Callandor:

Are you asking if you can automatically run a program when you insert a USB pen drive, like when you insert a cd? I don't think pen drives are set up to behave like regular bootable devices, and I have never seen or read about anyone being able to accomplish this. You can boot from a USB external drive, but not a pen drive.

05/02/2006 update: this is possible and articles have been posted describing how to do it. See http:#16592995

Accepted Solution

04.14.2004 at 02:05PM PDT, ID: 10827806

freshair:

put a file "autorun.inf" in your pen drive and type in the file path of the executable you want. I haven't tested it that works or not, but it won't hurt to give it a shot.

gl!

04.14.2004 at 02:50PM PDT, ID: 10828176

Timotheus1:

your best bet is to copy the autorun.inf file from a CD-Rom and put it in the root folder on the pen drive. you will need to modify the INI file to point to the program on the pen drive. I have used this method to assign custom icons to a specific hard drive partition.

Most Windows 2000/XP computers should be able to access the pen drive as soon as it is plugged in, no drivers will be required

04.14.2004 at 04:03PM PDT, ID: 10828667

ElForesto:

In order for autorun.inf to work, the drive in question must support auto-insert notification. In other words, it needs to tell Windows explicitly "I have newly inserted media". To the best of my knowledge, flash-memory drives such as that USB thumbdrive do not support such a thing.

Assisted Solution

05.10.2004 at 11:10AM PDT, ID: 11033592

tfloto:

I tried the Auto run with a SansDisk Minicruzer and it did not work. So I wasn't able to get "plug and run" functionality. I wrote a little routine in VC++ that detects when you plug a USB flash in, then finds, parses and executes the autorun.inf file. but this means you need such a program already installed on your PC.

05.14.2004 at 06:07AM PDT, ID: 11067886

snowyow1:

And may we have a look at this code sample?

07.28.2004 at 05:50AM PDT, ID: 11655767

codecraig:

yes, I would be interested in see this code, can you post it, or email it to <Removed by Community Support>

Thanks.

07.28.2004 at 09:34AM PDT, ID: 11658475

digloo:

Some study of the info at MS' site indicates that there's are a couple of flags buried deep inside of the OS that need to be changed so that when the driver loads up, it says it's a certain kind of device. The USB drivers are normal HDD drivers, and normal HDDs aren't like this.

I'd like to know what some thumb drive vendors have done with their device IDs to fool the OS into thinking they're like that. They probably say they're rewritable CDs or something like that, rather than HDDs.

Anyway, I'd like to get a copy of this code and the exe also. (digloo at yahoo dot com)

Thanks
-David

07.28.2004 at 03:46PM PDT, ID: 11662210

codecraig:

i found a company who makes USB drives, and has a small utilitiy to make the USB drive run with autorun:

http://www.universalsmartdrive.net/standard/downloads.htm

wish i could see the code, or i wonder if the program works with any other usb drive...

08.03.2004 at 07:21AM PDT, ID: 11704769

gmcfry:

The responses from Callandor and ElForesto are not accepted answers. I do no know who accepted them, not me. The accepted answer to this question is CODECRAIG.

Comment from codecraig
Date: 07/28/2004 06:46PM EDT
Comment

i found a company who makes USB drives, and has a small utilitiy to make the USB drive run with autorun:

http://www.universalsmartdrive.net/standard/downloads.htm

wish i could see the code, or i wonder if the program works with any other usb drive...

08.03.2004 at 07:14PM PDT, ID: 11711860

Rank: Guru

Callandor:

gmcfry,

Since you didn't ask this question, it's not surprising that you didn't accept the answers. Why do you think you can accept an answer for someone else? Isn't it up to them? Something may have worked for you, but that doesn't mean it's a solution for everyone.

08.03.2004 at 07:38PM PDT, ID: 11711935

codecraig:

..has anyone found a solution for this?? anyone have any "autorun" code or anything??

thanks.
craig

08.03.2004 at 10:55PM PDT, ID: 11712581

digloo:

Callendor said: "Since you didn't ask this question, it's not surprising that you didn't accept the answers. Why do you think you can accept an answer for someone else? Isn't it up to them? Something may have worked for you, but that doesn't mean it's a solution for everyone." I think you missed the point.

While I'm not totally familiar with the way this forum works or who gets to denote comments as "Accepted" or whatever, I would guess that a message that says it is the "Accepted Answer" is intended to convey some kind of authority, as if it's a "correct" answer. In this case, the (previous) "Accepted Answer" was absolutely NOT correct. It seems to have changed to one that is a bit closer to the truth, but it's still not correct. If you want the "truth", head on over to the Microsoft Knowledge Base and find out what it has to say.

In a nutshell, USB devices are plug-n-play devices, which means that they announce to the OS what sort of device they are when they're plugged in and what features they support. USB Storage devices tend to announce that they're ESDI drives. I don't know why this is, but they could just as easily say they're Zip drives, CDs, or some other kind of REAL removeable storage. The OS has a palette of settings that it loads up based on the settings for the various devices, and ESDI devices are basically NOT considered "removeable" by the OS. (They ARE "bootable", however, which is a totally un-related subject.)

According to the MSKB, you can run a program that flips some bits in the device driver telling the OS that the device IS removeable, and that it should enable auto-seeking for an autorun.* file upon insertion of a new media. Short of that, the only other way that seems you can get an autorun.* file to execute when you insert a USB storage device is if that storage device tells the OS that it's something other than an ESDI drive. That's something that is in exclusive control of the manufacturer of the device; it's not a user-settable option.

That said, I visited the site referred above (universalsmartdrive.com) and downloaded the x-autorun.exe file. When I tried to install it, I got an error saying it's not a valid executable -- it's apparently corrupted. Does anybody have a copy that works?

-David

08.04.2004 at 05:40AM PDT, ID: 11714701

Rank: Guru

Callandor:

If anyone disagrees with the accepted solution (which the asker determines), they can post in Community Support and protest. The requirement is that they have to show that they had the correct solution. As far as I can see, no one got this to work, but I'm not against someone finding a solution that does work. Everyone benefits if that happens, and our knowledge base is increased.

08.12.2004 at 07:40PM PDT, ID: 11790153

iatricjb:

Here's a whole other approach that some vendor claims works: http://www.hsc-us.com/consumer/usb_flashdrive/UDRW.html

01.12.2005 at 01:45PM PST, ID: 13029036

GB05:

I'd like to get a copy of this code and the exe also...

<Email address removed by Community Support>

04.08.2005 at 01:29AM PDT, ID: 13734112

Welltech-IT:

The company that makes the drive indicated by iatricjb has the autorun feature available for download here - http://www.udrw.com/download/udrun.EXE
When you run the program it creates a folder in the same directory it was run from, the readme file has installation instructions but the program will only install under Win98 & ME.

Has anyone else found an answer to this yet? I would prefer not to have to find a specific drive to accomplish this task.

05.18.2005 at 04:07AM PDT, ID: 14025895

daverb70:

Sorry to resurrect an oldish thread, but, er, me too!! Has anyone got a solution or is it just not the way these things are meant to work? I could see there being security implications that later MS OS's may not like.

Dave

05.18.2005 at 09:20AM PDT, ID: 14028582

digloo:

The question is, do you want to have to install a driver first in order to enable auto-run? Lexar makes a USB drive called "The Traveller" or something like that that comes with software that lets you enable auto-run (they call it "auto-pop" for some goofy reason), but ... you have to install it on the machine FIRST. The UDRW drive is designed to "announce" itself as TWO separate and distinct devices: one is a regular USB drive, which in fact is defined as a common ESDI removeable device that all USB drives use; the other is a CD-RW drive. It's the second one that enables auto-run WITHOUThaving to pre-install anything on a machine. Microsoft might some day add auto-run to ESDI device insertions as a feature to Longhorn or a later OS, but it's a long way off and not something that's likely to get a lot of attention in the press.

05.19.2005 at 06:08AM PDT, ID: 14035855

daverb70:

The answer to your question is No, the idea is to send out a promotional movie on a USB thumbdrive. When recipient inserts USB drive, movie auto plays.

I don't think it can be done, but we have found a company who claim they can do it. We have to order a load of drives though, and they will preinstall for us.

I tried the MS application and it created autorun.inf and said it had copied other files onto the device. I noted an exe and it was ref'd in the autorun.inf so I copied my own exe onto it and edited autorun.inf. Now, on XP I am prompted to browse the files or run the application -- selecting the latter runs my EXE. So its not really autorun -- user is asked what they want to do. I could not get it to do anything on win 2000 - keeps telling me the disk is not formatted would i like to format it? I tried formatting, but that failed also. It is formatted fine on the XP box. God knows what would happen if you stuck it in a Mac.

07.10.2005 at 09:05AM PDT, ID: 14407149

vinsont:

I don't have and answer but I do have some very interesting information. I created a autorun.inf to backup file on the c: drive to the thumb drive. I made to copies on on a Lexar 512 Jump Drive and one on a Apacer 64 Flash dirve. The Lexar drive works great. You plug it in the autorun kicks off and the files are backed up. However the 64 Flash Apacer doesn't work.

The only thing I see different is the Lexar doesn't show up as removable. They are both formated FAT32 and both partians are marked active.

Maybe this will let people know that autorun can be kicked off from a thumb drive, I just don't know how I did it.

Tommy

09.15.2005 at 02:04PM PDT, ID: 14893445

cozofdeath:

You can do it with a simple autorun file. Open notepad copy the below statement, save the file in your root USB directory with the filename "autorun.inf" and make sure you change the setup.exe to your program path and name that you want to run.

[Autorun]
open=setup.exe

or

[autorun]
shellexecute=setup.exe

Visit this address for all the autorun commands, its fairly simple and there is much more you can do.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/autorun/autoplay_cmds.asp

Or
http://www.phdcc.com/shellrun/autorun.htm
for many many more options

As for booting, this should help someone out
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx
About half-way down the page is the real information

05.02.2006 at 08:52PM PDT, ID: 16592995

Rank: Guru

Callandor:

Some newer information has been published that describes how to make a bootable USB key: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/windows_in_your_pocket/index.html

20080236-EE-VQP-29