Autoplay?

[Sailor Steve]

An interesting (and annoying) problem has cropped up. Every now and then Autoplay starts to run, all by itself (which in itself makes sense because it's "Auto").

What happens is that I'll be doing something and all-of-a-sudden a little window will pop up that says it's scanning all of My Documents. This happens fairly quickly, but then I get a screen showing all the media players. It asks me to choose one, and then goes away.

It's not a big thing, but if I'm doing anything, the thing that I'm doinf freezes up until I can get the thing out of the way. I looked in 'Help' and followed the instructions, but that only led me to the same "Choose which player you want to run things", so it was no help.

What exactly is Autoplay, and is there some way to turn it off at the source?

[kiwi_2005]

you haven't got any USB card connected? That can make auto play keep coming up or your cd rom drive not registering in bios. Could be many different reasons why its happening though.

Try MS Autoplay Repair Wizard
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

''The Microsoft AutoPlay Repair Wizard scans your computer devices to find defective AutoPlay settings, and attempts to fix those it finds.''

Turn off Autoplay on all drives
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...nd-usb-drives/

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by kiwi_2005

you haven't got any USB card connected? That can make auto play keep coming up or your cd rom drive not registering in bios. Could be many different reasons why its happening though.

I have an external hard drive, and that's what keeps getting scanned. I'll try those now. Thanks.

But my big question still remains: What is Autoplay, and why is it there? Does shutting it down hurt anything else?

Sorry, three questions.

[kiwi_2005]

AutoPlay, a feature introduced in Windows XP, examines newly discovered removable media and devices and, based on content such as pictures, music or video files, launches an appropriate application to play or display the content. It is closely related to the AutoRun operating system feature. ...

Doesn't hurt to have autoplay off you would just have to manually open up the right program - eg music files on cd - start up media player.

[SteamWake]

Steve, it is most likely the external drive.

Drive manufacturers seem compelled to install some sort of 'drive management' software with their drives.

Inspect the root folder of the drive and look for any autoexec's or autoruns that you dident put there and simply delete them.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Steve, it is most likely the external drive.

Drive manufacturers seem compelled to install some sort of 'drive management' software with their drives.

I agree, not because I know anything but because I began to notice that it was only the 'E' drive doing it.

Originally Posted by Kiwi2005

Doesn't hurt to have autoplay off you would just have to manually open up the right program - eg music files on cd - start up media player.

Well now here's the weird part. Neither of the links you gave me helped. Autoplay Repair Wizard kept telling me there was nothing wrong, and Run said that 'gpedit.msc' didn't exist in my system. So I finally remembered "Google is your friend" and started trying different things. It turns out 'gpedit.msc' is a Vista/7 thing and doesn't work with XP.

I ended up downloading Windows TweakUI, which contains switches to turn just about anything on and off. That seems to have done the trick, but when I put a music CD into the drive, Autoplay came on as usual and asked me if I wanted to play it or rip it to my computer, just like always.

I'm thinking that the problem was with the External (as we already established), but the Autoplay on the CD drive is still fine, so nothing has really changed except the problem seems to be gone.

Perfectamundo! Thanks all!

[frau kaleun]

I ended up downloading Windows TweakUI

If you haven't already, take a good look at all the things this can do for you. For instance it will let you choose folders on your external drive to serve as your designated "My Documents" and "My Music" system folders... I did this for the My Music folder, since all my tunes are on an external drive. Which meant that the standard Windows shortcut to "My Music" opened up an empty folder. Switched it 'round with TweakUI and now anything that points to "My Music" opens up the folder that actually has my music in it.

[Sailor Steve]

Thanks for the heads-up on that, ms K. Unfortunately after several days of frustration I did that trick manually. On the other hand, maybe that's what started my problems.

[kiwi_2005]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

. So I finally remembered "Google is your friend" and started trying different things. It turns out 'gpedit.msc' is a Vista/7 thing and doesn't work with XP.

Well google got that wrong gpedit.msc does work with Windows XP I just tried it now - running ''Windows XP professional edition'' Only thing i can think off is it mustn't work with the versions - Windows Media Centre & Win XP home edition. Or you have Windows XP professional that's been tweaked to the eyeballs and gpedit.msc no longer exists

Anyways Windows Tweak UI fix it for you, good program and Im surprised that's still around I remember TUI when it came out for Windows 98.

The main thing is you got it fixed

[Sailor Steve]

My mistake, or maybe I misunderstood (by far the most likely answer). I do have XP Home, so that could be it. Thanks again.