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SAbboushiFlag for United States of America

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How stop autoplay from running when connecting USB external drive?

Hi-
I have an external USB drive.  Whenever I connect it, 'autoplay' runs through a scan of the drive - one scan window for each partition.  Then for each partition, a window is displayed showing multiple applications asking "What do you want windows to do?".  I also note that the option (checkbox) "Always do the selected action" is not displayed here.

I don't want autoplay to launch when I connect a USB external drive - AND I don't want to change autoplay's behavior for other devices.  Or worst case, I want Explorer to be run when I connect an external USB drive.  Can anybody please help me?
Avatar of mslunecka
mslunecka

You should just be able to connect the drive, right click on it in Explorer or My Computer and select the Autoplay tab.  You can select an action to perform and choose No Action as your default.  That shouldn't change your settings for any other drive.
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jwleonard1

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when you plug it in, hold the SHIFT button
hold the shift button then plug it in, it will disable autoplay!

Simple, eh =)
that way it is disabled only for that drive, and not for anything else!

this is the safest way to fix your problem
Avatar of Mohammed Hamada
Hi SAbboushi
Please Do the Following steps:-

Click Start, click Run, type GPEDIT.MSC to open Group Policy in the Microsoft Management Console.

Double-click Computer Configuration, double-click Administrative templates, double-click System, and then click Turnoff autoplay.

This should work :-)
moh10ly
yes, all those work, but SAbboushi is asking " I don't want autoplay to launch when I connect a USB external drive - [*] AND I don't want to change autoplay's behavior for other devices [*]"

using those other methods would disable autoplay for ALL devices, and he doesn't want that.

so again, I say
when you plug it in, hold the SHIFT button
hold the shift button then plug it in, it will disable autoplay!

Thanks.
ah I forgot to mention
pressing SHIFT allows disabling Auto-play for that ONE instance only...
so if you want to use autoplay, just connect it as normal, no SHIFT key

this trick works for other plug and play devices too, and also when you insert a CDROM also
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ASKER

mslunecka - I tried what you suggested, but it did not work.  I also tried selecting properties, autoplay, select action to perform, No action.  Still, each time the external USB drive is connected, autoplay scans each partition and then puts up a list of actions to take, one window/list of actions for each partition.

likeachild - my bad - I meant to put in my original post that I did not want to have to hold the shift key each time - since I have multiple partitions, I have to hold the key a LONG time, otherwise autoplay still starts for the last few partitions

jwleonard1 - your first post has another link to NoDriveAutoRun where I can specify the drive letters NOT to autorun.  This looks just like what I need.  I will test and let you know.

Thanks everyone for your posts.

jwleonard1 - exactly what I was looking for: NoDriveAutoRun in registry
Thanks-
did you try pressing SHIFT though?
it should disable autoplay for the entire drive
just pressing it for like 2 sec when you plug it in
Yes - and if I only had 1 partition on the external drive, then 2 - 4 seconds would probably work.  However, with multiple partitions, I need to hold the shift down for 2 - 4 seconds for each partition until autoplay has had the opportunity to recognize all the paritions (seems it does this sequentially) and then to recognize the shift is being pressed, and then to continue to the next partition, and then recognize the shift is being pressed...