fiddle with autoplay menu

Posted by: jobinmartin on: March 22, 2007

• In: computer tips | hacks | Useful info
• Comment!

Windows is the leader in operating systems terms because of its user friendly interface. With no need to use command line to undertake actions and working just with the mouse, even the most inexperienced users can quickly learn to use.

However, Microsoft Windows lacks much in the way of customization in obvious areas (such as the autoplay menu, or making your start menu programs sort itself alphabetically).

But enough rambling on with the article…

Using Software To Modify The Autoplay Menu

For those of you who don’t understand….this is the autoplay menu, just to be sure we are all on the same page.

You have the chance to meet this feature whenever you insert a CD/DVD into the unit. For a short time, the CD/DVD will be read and immediately a menu will appear offering options how to open the different files that reside on that media. When there are music files on the disk in the autoplay menu, you are provided with applications that are able to play audio files. So far, everything seems to be fine.

Very often however, the programs in the list to open the files on CD/DVD had been already uninstalled from the system, therefore choosing an uninstalled program would just result in an error.

The main problem is that there is no option to edit or customize the autoplay menu. We need to use third party programs in order to customize it. We don’t want to remove the autoplay menu’s appearance, we just want to remove/add options to the menu.

One solution would be using TweakUI provided by Microsoft. Once you have installed the application, launch it and go to My Computer > Autoplay > Handlers. You can also use Autoplay Repair or one of the many other autoplay menu modifiers.

From now on, things are very simple: you can edit, delete or create strings for the menu. The application also offers the option to enable/disable the autoplay menu for the CD/DVD drives and for removable drives too.

Manually Editing The Autoplay Menu In The Registry

The other solution is a little bit more complicated and sort of risky because it means editing the registry. Before doing anything in the registry, it is recommended to make a backup. If you don’t know how to backup the registry go here.

The keys of the programs that are listed in the autoplay menu are found at these registry locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer
>AutoplayHandlers>Handlers

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion
>Explorer>AutoplayHandlers>EventHandlers

Try to locate and delete only the undesired entries don’t go messing with the registry needlessly.

source