Windows 2000 Pro: How do I turn off CD Autorun (and lose My Docs folder)?

Factual Questions
1

Just got a new office computer with Windows 2000 Professional (hopefully it’s as stable an OS as I’m told it is).

I hate CD’s automatically “running” when inserted or when the computer restarts.

In Windows 95/98, I could turn off this feature by going to the Control Panel, opening the “System” icon, then in the Device Manager tab selecting the CD ROM device, clicking on “Properties” and unselecting the “Auto Insert Notification” checkbox in the Settings tab.

I can find no similar checkbox when doing the same set of instructions in Windows 2000. I have tried all different manner of accessing potential properties locations, from the Device Manager to the My Computer windows to Windows Explorer to the various Administrative Tools available in Windows 2000. Perhaps I’m better off now that I’ve explored all these new features that Windows 2000 has to offer, but I can’t for the life of me figure how to turn off the CD Auto Insert Notification (or whatever it’s called).

If it makes any difference, there is only one CD device in the computer, and it is a CD RW Burner. There is no DVD drive (although there is a Zip 250 drive).

Any Windows 2000 experts know how to do this?

BONUS PROBLEM

I’m less hopeful about this one, but is there any way I can delete that pesky “My Documents” folder? At least in Windows 95/98 the My Documents folder was inside the C: drive, and I could just ignore it (you can probably tell that I’m the kind of guy who hates being told how their computer should be set up or what it has to look like).

But in Windows 2000, it appears right on the desktop, with a “My Pictures” folder inside of it. I am allowed to delete the icon from my desktop with no problem, but when I open Windows Explorer there it is in the main root of the tree, above the C: drive icon, and it won’t let me delete it. If I try te rename it so it’s not right on the top, or move it within the C: drive (maybe then I won’t notice it as much), it let’s me rename it but it stays on the top. Very annoying. Any suggestions?

2

  1. The only way I know to disable CD Autorun in Win2K is through Tweak UI. There may be other options, but I don’t know about them.

  2. Go to your Windows Explorer shortcut, right-click on it, and change the text in the Target box to read:
    C:\WINNT\explorer.exe /n, /e, c:
    (or change c:\ to whatever you want)

3

Thanks, Earthling, I will download the Tweak UI program.

I see now that I should have looked to Microsoft’s web pages for info, but I think I have an irrational mental block preventing me from going to Microsoft for help. I can’t believe I’m the only person in the world who does not want their CD’s to run automatically. I can understand making that mode the default for the majority of computer users who may need to have CD’s run on their own as they would not know how to start one up otherwise, but I can’t understand purposely leaving out the option of disabling this “feature” for those intelligent enough to figure out how to turn it off. Well, enough of that rant; it doesn’t belong on this board (but I’ll leave it in anyways!)

As for #2: I appreciate your solution

but I am not sure I fully understand it.

As I read this, you are telling me to change the command line of the shortcut that runs Windows Explorer. The Windows 2000 computer is not here as I am writing this, so although I should try it before asking more questions, I am curious as to what this does. Has Microsoft put in a command line switch that specifically removes that particular folder? What do the /n and /e switches do?

4

richardb, there is an easier way to disable autorun selectively - just hold down the shift key when you insert a CD. Keep it down until the disk has finished initialising and it is obvious that no program is loading.

As for the second problem, I will experiment on the company’s machine at work tomorrow…:slight_smile:

5

Oh, I fully sympathize with your reluctance to go to Microsoft’s website for help. I’ve found that MS tends to move their content around pretty much willy-nilly, so you can’t just bookmark some page and be sure that it’ll be there when you next visit. To compound this problem, their internal search engine doesn’t return very useful hits, either. I’ve had much better luck Googling on a term and going to the MS page that shows up in the results.

Regarding Windows Explorer – yes, change the command line that launches the Explorer shortcut. In re-reading my previous post, I realized that I forgot to mention you should choose Properties after right-clicking, but I gather you’ve figured that out already. Anyway, this is what Microsoft has to say about the switches:


/n   Opens a new single-pane window for the default
     selection. This is usually the root of the drive
     Windows is installed on. If the window is already
     open, a duplicate opens.

/e   Opens Windows Explorer in its default view.

In its simplest form, the “c:\winnt\explorer.exe c:” command works as well, though the /n switch allows you to open multiple Explorer windows, and the /e switch shows the directory tree in the left-hand pane, which I find handy.

Now, you must be asking, “but how does changing the command line remove My Documents?” Ah, that’s the Redmond black magic, grasshopper. Even though the original display shows My Documents as a folder under Desktop, its real location is c:\Documents_and_Settings\YourID\My_Documents (underscores added so the line doesn’t break up), and by forcing Explorer to open in your directory, you’re telling Windows to not display it as a Desktop folder – in other words, it’s not actually removed, it just goes back to hiding where it belongs. Exactly how this is accomplished, however, I have no idea.

Finally, in many cases, programs can still be opened with command-line switches, though GUIs makes people forget that fact. And more often than not, software makers perpetuate this fog by not mentioning them anywhere in the standard user documentation.

6

I haven’t tried this, but FWIW, the book Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Expert Companion (MS Press, 2000) has this to say (p. 251):

To disable AutoPlay on all CD drives, open Group Policy (gpedit.msc) [which I guess means go to run and type gpedit.msc] and navigate to to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System. Open the Disable Autoplay policy, select Enabled [sic], and select CD-ROM drives. This adds CD-ROM drives to the list of drive types for which AutoPlay is disabled by default…

7

That’s a good one. An alternate solution is this:

Open the registry editor (click Start, Run, type regedit.exe, press enter)
Click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, press CTRL-F (for find), type NoDriveTypeAutoRun then press enter.
Once it comes up, double-click on the value on the right hand side (should be 95 0 0 0 at first) and change the value to 255 0 0 0.
Reboot.

That’s exactly the same solution as what michaelbarr posted, except you’re doing it manually instead of having the utility do it.

The 255 is a bit-mask where each bit that is set STOPS a device from autorunning, where the devices are:



128   64   32   16   8    4    2    1
 |        |      |      |    |     |     |     |
 |        |      |      |    |     |     |    +---(Unknown)
 |        |      |      |    |     |     |     
 |        |      |      |    |     |     +-------(No Root Directory - I don't know what this one is)
 |        |      |      |    |     |     
 |        |      |      |    |     +------------Removable (zip, ls-120, etc)
 |        |      |      |    | 
 |        |      |      |    +-----------------Fixed (hard drives)
 |        |      |      | 
 |        |      |      +---------------------Remote (Windows or NFS shares)
 |        |      |
 |        |      +---------------------------CDROM
 |        |
 |        +---------------------------------Ramdisk
 |
 +-----------------------------------------(Unspecified Reserved)

For example, if you want autorun enabled on Ramdisks, Network Shares, Hard drives, and nothing else, your value would be 1+2+4+32+128 (the value for each device where autorun is disabled), or 167 (followed by the three zeroes).

What michaelbarr posted is just a utility that does that for you automatically. I also like to know what’s happening behind the scenes.

8

crap. would a moderator please get rid of my code tags?
thank you.

9

THANKS GUYS!

The SDMB is without a doubt the greatest resource available to mankind!

michaelbarr: The “gpedit.msc” program works like a charm. Thank you. Exactly what I was looking for, but unable to find by myself. How is any normal person supposed to know how to run this program to access features unaccessable by any normal menu methods? Ya think they could make accessing this feature a little more obscure?

I obviously got myself the wrong book: Mastering Windows 2000 Professional by Mark Minasi did NOT have this info (at least not in the index, I can’t say I’ve read every page yet).

Joe_Cool: Thanks, but I’ll stay away from hex editors if I can, and the “gpedit.msc” program works fine.

Earthling: I’ve now brought in the Windows 2000 machine (I’m on it now) and your command line text works perfectly. Maybe even better than perfectly; the explorer tree now looks identical to the ones in Windows 95/98 that I’m used to. I’m not even sure what the differences are, but I can see as it comes up that it looks more familiar. No more My Documents folder!

THANKS AGAIN.