Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Do you disable Autorun on your PC? Many viruses execute malicious code by running automatically on your PC via a thumb drive, network drive etc. If you haven’t yet disabled Autorun, I recommend you do. This guide will show you the easiest way to disable Autorun in just a few minutes and will potentially save you from getting an avoidable PC virus that takes time (or money) to clean.

Note: For those that don’t like using tools for tasks like this, there is a manual method using the registry editor or the Group Policy Editor (if your version of Windows has that feature enabled.) This is described, at length, in this Microsoft KB article: Disable autorun. At minimum, I recommend you disable on drives of unknown type and on network locations.

A simple tool for disabling autorun (see note above about manual method) is Disable Autorun.

Download and install the tool. Once installed, right click the shortcut on the desktop and click Run as Administrator

Choose from the following options:

• Disables AutoRun on drives of unknown type
• Disables AutoRun on removable drives
• Disables AutoRun on fixed drives
• Disables AutoRun on network drives
• Disables AutoRun on CD-ROM drives
• Disables AutoRun on RAM disks
• Disables AutoRun on all kinds of drives

I recommend you go with at least the default options and, if you’re not sure which options to pick, click Disables AutoRun on all kinds of drives:

Click Apply and restart your computer to apply the changes. Repeat for other computers around the home or send on to a friend to do the same.

Download Disable Autorun

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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