I have had a number of people ask about how you could easily configure the autorun or autoplay options in Windows so that when you put a USB drive into the computer, it will automatically pop up. I was going to do a long technical article about editing the registry but, in the end, I decided against it. Instead, I will introduce you to a cool Microsoft utility called TweakUI and show you how to use it to configure autoplay.
Introducing TweakUI
TweakUI is a member of the Microsoft PowerToys group of utilities. These utilities let you fine tune and extend what you can do with Windows XP.
The purpose of TweakUI is to give you the ability to configure many setting that are not normally easily configurable in Windows XP. From the PowerToys website:
This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
One of the things that TweakUI lets us do is set the autoplay settings for your computer. This is the aspect that we will be focusing on for this article but do spend some time looking into some of the other settings that you can configure with it because it can be a very powerful tool. Also take some time to look at the other PowerToys that are available when you are on the PowerToys website. The site is chock full of geeky goodness!
Download and Install TweakUI
Note: AutoPlay only works on Windows XP Service Pack 2
The first thing you need to do is download the TweakUI installer.
Once you have downloaded the software, you need to install the application. It is a very easy installation. Watch the video or download it:
Basically, you run the TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe file, click Next, accept the license agreement, click Next, wait for the application to install, and then click on Finish. (OK, the video was a bit much but I’m thinking about doing more of it in the future and I thought that this would be a good experiment.)
Configuring AutoPlay
Start TweakUI by going to Start -> All Programs ->PowerToys for Windows XP -> TweakUI.
The main screen is broken up into two parts; the tree menu on the left and the information/settings pane on the right. Each menu and submenu on the left displays different information in the settings pane when selected.
We are interested in the AutoPlay options which are found under My Computer -> AutoPlay on the left hand side. When you expand this menu, you will see three further submenus. We are interested in Drives and Types. We will be looking at the settings in these two locations.
Note: In order for AutoPlay to work properly, both the settings in the Drives and the Types options need to be set. If only one is set the other will override it and the AutoPlay will not work.
Drives
In the Drives section, you will see a list of drives from A: to Z:. Each one of these will have a check box beside it. To ensure that the auto selected drive letter that is given to your USB drive is enables for AutoPlay, you need to ensure that every drive has a check mark beside it.
Any drive that does not have a check mark beside it will not autoplay when its drive letter is assigned to a USB drive. If you made any changes to the drive letter selections, click the Apply button.
Types
There are two different drive types that support AutoPlay; optical drives (i.e. CDs and DVDs) and removable drives (i.e. USB drives, flash drives, etc.).
In order for USB drives to AutoPlay, you need to ensure that the Enable AutoPlay for removable drives option is checked. If you made any changes, click Apply.
You can now close TweakUI.
Conclusion
TweakUI is a very useful tool. For users who would like to have an easy method of modifying the AutoPlay parameters on their computer, this is a very effective method.
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February 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Thanks for posting this. Autoplay is a mess on my new computer and I’ve not been able to get it right on my own.
Problem solved! W00T!!
Next, I’ll have a look at the inf tweek entry - good stuff.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:20 am
How do I set up autoplay to start a program on C: when a usb drive is loaded. Specifically, I would like to start GoodSync each time the usb drive is inserted. I am trying to add a handler with the Tweak UI powertoy.