Autorun problems

If you experience a problem this page will resolve it.

99.999% of problems

Download our example files and write them to CD without changing them in any way.

The most common problems

Check that you have written the right files to CD, carefully check the filenames
Check that you have written the right files to CD, very carefully check the filenames

Check that you have written starterfile.exe to CD

Check that you have closed the CD

If you want to autorun a file other than start.htm then you need to edit autorun.inf and replace start.htm with the name of the file you want to autorun.

If you have edited autorun.inf or renamed files

Check that the file you want to autorun is identical to the filename within autorun.inf.

The format of autorun.inf needs to be exact - just an extra space in the file or different types of brackets can cause this not to work.

Don't save autorun.inf as mac or unix files: it needs to be a PC ASCII file.
Mac/UNIX files have different end of line characters which stop autorun from working.

Do not rename autorun.inf or starterfile.exe

Filenames

You cannot autorun files which do not have a file extension.

Filenames that contain spaces need to be enclosed in quotes in order to autorun.
eg "file with spaces.htm"

Do not try to autorun htm files called home or that begin with home.

Files which are named home.htm (or begin with home such as homepage.htm) are not autorun but an intranet site is attempted to be autorun. This seems be be one of Microsoft's undocumented features!

AutoRun can be turned off

It is possible for AutoRun to be turned off.

Enable and Disable AutoRun on Windows 95, 98 or ME

1. Click Start , point to Settings , click Control Panel , and then double-click System .



2. Double-click the CDROM branch on the Device Manager tab, and then double-click the entry for your CD-ROM drive.



3. On the Settings tab, click to clear the Auto Insert Notification check box.



4. Click OK , click Close , and then click Yes when you are prompted to restart your computer.

Enable and Disable AutoRun on Windows NT and 2000

This information applies to:
Windows NT Server 4.0 and NT Workstation 4.0
Windows 2000, Professional, Server, Advanced Server and Datacenter server.

There is no option to enable or disable automatically running CD-ROMs in the user interface. To enable or disable automatically running CD-ROMs, you must edit the registry:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then press ENTER.



2. Locate and click the following registry key:




HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom

3. To disable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 0 (zero). To enable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 1.



4. Restart your computer.

Disable AutoRun on Windows XP (Home or Pro)

This method involves editing the registry so you need to take precautions before making any changes.

1. Click Start, then Run. Type regedit and click OK.

2. The registry setting to change is shown below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionpolicies

3. Right-click on policies, then choose New then Key.

4. Immediately type Explorer and hit OK.

5. Type NoDriveTypeAutoRun and click OK twice.

6. Type b5 then click OK.

This creates a value called NoDriveTypeAutoRun set to 0x000000b5.

7. Click Registry then Exit.

8. Click Start then Log Off and log off the machine.

Autorun is now disabled

Enable AutoRun on Windows XP (Home or Pro)

1. To enable AutoPlay, follow the above instructions to get to the NoDriveTypeAutoRun value.

2. Right-click and choose Delete.

3. Log off your computer.

Autorun will now be enabled.

No application installed or associated with the file extension

There may not be any application associated with the file extension that you are trying to autorun.

To check this, use Windows explorer and double click the file you are trying to autorun.
If it opens up in a browser then the association is OK.

Problems with viewing files on CD

One person has reported that a CD did not autorun and the CD appeared to contain no files. This problem was being caused by antivirus software.

Paths

Do not have any references to hard disk drives in your .htm files
CDs will be seen as different drive letters on different PCs and thus all hyperlinks should be relative.

Very rare problems

Other reasons are extremely rare.

We have seen one instance where the user had saved the registered version of StarterFile to their hard disk but were still writing the unregistered version to CD. Their software was writing a cached copy of the unregistered version of StarterFile instead of the registered version on their hard disk. Turning the PC off cleared the cache and solved this problem.

We have seen one instance where the user had virus checking software (Finjan) which actually corrupted the download of startefile.exe and stopped it from working.

We have seen one instance where an incorrect CD driver was installed.
Although CD-ROM could be read the incorrect driver meant AutoRun did not operate.
CD-ROM drives must have 32-bit device drivers that detect when a user inserts a compact disc and notify the system. Device drivers for MS-DOS or 16-bit versions of Windows do not have this feature.

When you are viewing drives in My Computer, double-click the icon to view the contents of the drive and get the error "This program is needed for opening files of type 'File'. " then read this: Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 153981.

Contact us

If having read the above information regarding problems you do wish to contact us, please email us at autorun@trah.co.uk