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The following was mentioned in a post regarding autorunning from a flash drive:

"To get autorun working under Windows 7 requires special firmware on the drive and/or some specialty software preinstalled on the machine."

Could this be elaborated on?


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4 Answers

I think we may need some clarification on Autoplay Vs. Autorun.








To enable Autorun you will have to change some settings on your computer.

  1. Click Start, type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
  3. Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, then expand Windows Components, and then click Autoplay Policies.
  4. In the Details pane, double click on Turn off Autoplay ,and make sure that it is set to disabled
  5. In the Details pane, double click on Default behavior for Autorun, set it to Enabled and then select Automatically execute the autorun commands
  6. Restart your computer. enter image description hereenter image description here

Note that you will not be able to bypass the Autorun policy, it will only work on the intended media types such as CD's DVD's and Video Games.

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Thank you very much. If one of the flash drive partitions emulated a CD drive, would I be able to autorun content then? –  Scott Jan 18 '13 at 12:49
Yes, and you'll need a U3 Drive. –  James Young Jan 18 '13 at 12:55
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You can't bypass the OS' control of AutoPlay - if it's your own computer you can configure as per @Petr Abulin's answer. If you're looking to distribute flash drives to others you can configure the autorun.inf on the drive to enable AutoPlay, for users who haven't disabled it.

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Go to Control Panel -> Hardware -> AutoPlay, and configure autorun the way you want.

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This doesn't answer @Scott's question regarding bypassing AutoPlay being disabled. This is how to disable AutoPlay. –  LuckySpoon Jan 18 '13 at 11:08
Oh, seems like I misunderstood @Scott question. I guess this is similir to breaching core security features of an OS, since it's intended so it's behavior could be changed only by computer admin, and not some malware. –  Petr Abdulin Jan 18 '13 at 11:12
Agreed, as per my answer. I think he may be looking for info on how to configure it generally so your answer may still be useful to him. –  LuckySpoon Jan 18 '13 at 11:14
I am looking in fact to do it in a way that any computer I plug it into autoruns specific content. What if I make a partition that emulates a CD drive? Could I put the autorun content on there, hide the content and make that partition unformattable (or at least hidden?) –  Scott Jan 18 '13 at 11:31
"Any computer" presents a bit of an issue. Windows/Mac/Linux/Unix? Thin clients, laptops, servers, netbooks, desktops? You could setup the AutoPlay equivalent for whatever you're targeting, but you can't stop the user from disabling AutoPlay. –  LuckySpoon Jan 18 '13 at 12:12
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Enable autorun for USB drives on Windows 7, no changes are needed to the USB drive, works with the standard autorun.inf: http://leelusoft.blogspot.com/2013/04/apusb-47-10.html

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