Scott asked me the other day how to keep Windows XP from playing his CDs right away. CD AutoPlay, which tries to let you listen to or otherwise use your discs as soon as they’re mounted, is nice if you like it (like I do), but I guess it can be pretty annoying if you don’t. If you’re like my friend and don’t want Media Player or other seemingly-unbidden applications, don’t fret – they’re easily prevented.
Open My Computer (if you don’t have the icon on your desktop or in your Start menu, you can use Start-Run explorer.exe /n,/e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} to get there) and right-click on your CD drive’s icon. Select Properties and then the AutoPlay tab. For each type of disk (music, pictures, etc), you can choose exactly what you want to happen… including “Take no action.”
Users of Windows 98 or Millenium don’t have as many choices, but can visit Properties of My Computer, Device Manager and the CD drive’s Settings tab. From there you can un-check the Auto Insert Notification option. Just remember that you’ll need to refresh (F5) explorer windows when you swap discs.
[update: Doh! I keep forgetting TweakUI, but Tommy keeps me on my toes. TweakUI handles CD AutoPlay too. Much easier and less chance of error. use that instead.]