Autorun

I can see the intention of MS when they made the autorun feature: to make things easier. The cd will autoplay upon insertion and on the case of flash disks, a window will pop-out with options on what you would like to do. So much so, it is helpful if the flash disk you're gonna insert is virus-free, but if it's not, it's gonna ruin your world like it did mine a couple of days ago.

My life was functioning normally until Angel inserted her ipod shuffle to charge. Itunes normally popped out. I closed it since ipod's just gonna be recharged. I continued working until a half-hour passed and a window (much like the size of those that pops out after flash disks insertion) suddenly popped out saying "This computer will shut down in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." And my world crumbled.

Goodbye to all my unsaved documents which are written in notepad. Goodbye to all the pics I was editing. And later on, I also had to say goodbye to all the files in my primary hard disk. The computer turned on twice after the ipod incident. But the third time I had to turn it on, it had to be booted by the windows installer because it kept on showing blue screen with errors written on top.

Now my hard disk is as good as new. I don't want that to happen again. Ever. But antivirus softwares doesn't do much good with flash disks' autorun virus. And I learned that you have to turn off the autorun feature so you still have the chance to clean the flash disk before it infects your computer.

I found this detailed steps to turn that autorun feature off:

To prevent from being easily infected with autorun viruses and worms from USB flash drives, iPods, etc.

Disable Autoplay Xp:

click Start
click Run
type: gpedit.msc
click administrative templates
click System
click Turn off Autoplay
click Enable and "set to All drives"
click Apply
close window

Note: do this for both Computer and any User Configurations.

Open My Computer
Click Tools--> Folder Options--> View
-select "Show hidden files and folders";
-remove check on "Hide extensions of known file types";
-remove check on "Hide protected operating system files";
-click Apply
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Never ever open a removable drive in My Computer. Just don't open My computer when there's a flash drive of any sort in your usb port or a floppy disk in your floppy drive.

-When opening flash drives, right click Start > Explore
-navigate to your flash drive on the right panel. you should be able to view the contents without double clicking. if you see the familiar autorun virus files (exe, bat, htt, ico,vbs, usually blue box icons or green paper scrolls), delete them right away! unplug the flash drive. check task manager for running programs (for Disk Knight, you have to do this before deleting the files para hindi na bumalik) and close the apps and processes. replug the drive.

Disable Autoplay on Xp Home

There is no gpedit.msc for Xp Home. Copy the following lines on a notepad. Save it as "Disable Autoplay.reg" on your desktop. Double click it to run and it should automatically edit your registry for you.

Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\Explorer]
"NoDriveTypeAutoRun"=dword:000000b5

if you want the cd autoplay to keep working, change b5 to 95.

Note: you can also run regedit, search for NoDriveTypeAutoRun , and change the value manually.

Source: ulop.net