disable Autorun registry key
With significant rise of malwares employing autorun.inf to execute and spread, Microsoft pushed a solution by disabling autorun registry key through Windows Update and Automatic update. Please refer all the details from this url: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715
Here’s an instruction to do it manually.
How to selectively disable specific Autorun features
To selectively disable specific Autorun features, you must modify the NoDriveTypeAutoRun value under the following registry key subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
Autorun is also known as AutoPlay. The following table shows the settings for the NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry value.
| Value | Meaning |
| 0×1 | Disables AutoPlay on drives of unknown type |
| 0×4 | Disables AutoPlay on removable drives |
| 0×8 | Disables AutoPlay on fixed drives |
| 0×10 | Disables AutoPlay on network drives |
| 0×20 | Disables AutoPlay on CD-ROM drives |
| 0×40 | Disables AutoPlay on RAM disks |
| 0×80 | Disables AutoPlay on drives of unknown type |
| 0xFF | Disables AutoPlay on all kinds of drives |
Personally, I prefer 0xFF value which disables autoplay on all kinds of drives. The draw back here is when you are installing from CD ‘coz you have to manually execute the setup instead of automatically running it. The good thing, you’ll be safe from autorun malwares!
These registry settings can be ineffective under some circumstances, or they can revert their original state. MS released recently several patches trying to fix the issue. You can check out my blogpost with more details about autorun malware and all the different methods I know about to defend against them: http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2008/09/autorun-malware.html
Your blog post provides good details.. Thanks!