How can I disable Autoplay on Windows XP Home Edition?
Notes:
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XP Home Edition does not have the group policy snap in (that snap in is only present in the Professional edition of XP)
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I'd like to disable it entirely so that it does not appear
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Autoplay and Autorun are not the same thing
Solution:
Set the following registry key to 0xFF
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Polices\Explorer\NoDriveAutoRun
Best Answer
How to Disable Autoplay Windows
Okay, so I had to do some digging but the answer may be to simply change the applicable registry keys in Windows with the appropriate values to disable this functionality. You'll unfortunately have to do some reading and testing to confirm what values, etc. apply in your case for what you need to disable this functionality on but this should work.
I tried to quote only the applicable parts needed for a better understanding of how this works below but the source of the articles each have a link beneath each.
According to Disabling Autoplay through Group Policy or the registry~, you will set a specific value to a specific registry key:
According to NoDriveAutoRun, "Autoplay is triggered by a Media Change Notification (MCN) message" and "Entries that suppress the MCN message, such as Autorun and AutoRunAlwaysDisable also disable Autoplay" by setting specific registry key values:
So based on this information, it appears that if you disable specific Autorun features, you will then disable the Autoplay functionality as well so see the below quoted article and the applicable table value for what needs to change and the values for those registry keys: