Disable Autoplay In Xp To Reduce The Impact Of Usb Virus

Virus can enter your PC in a number of ways, especially for computers with internet connection. But today computers without internet connection are also infected with virus. The majority of infections are due to wide use of portable devices such as Pendrives, MP3 players, iPod's etc. For example take a look at this picture :



In the above image we see that virus is using a replica of windows explorer option to deceive the user. If the user clicks OK then he will be infected with that virus.

In order minimize the impact of USB based viruses we have to disable the autoplay option. Follow these steps to disable autoplay option in XP :

1. Go to Start, then RUN the following command : gpedit.msc
2. In group policy editor select Administrative Templates under Computer Configuration tab.
3. Under Administrative Template select System. On right-side pane you will see option Turn off Autoplay, select it.
4. Right click on it and select Properties. This opens a window, select Enabled, then Apply and click OK. See image below for more assistance.



That's it. From this you have to manually explore USB drive from My Computer. This gives you an option to scan pendrive with antivirus everytime you connect USB drive to PC. Thus you can eliminate virus before it invades your computer.

 

 

 

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This topic is a little bit short, so it cannot be accepted as a tutorial. That's why I moved it here.
Now, two comments.
1) Please avoid double-postings, you posted this twice.
2) Didn't you happen to copy this text from somewhere else on the internet ?

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I think autoplay and autorun is different, and (I think) mostly computers are infected by autorun function, and not by the autoplay function. Autoplay is a feature which you can automatically view/listen files inside your removable drives. winblows detects your drive, and determines whether it contains viewable/playable files or not, and display autoplay dialog. But in autorun, winblows detects your drive, and if it has autorun.inf, windows will launch executable commands inside autorun.inf automatically, even you don't want to launch it. CMIIW. If the virus is inside a viewable / playable file (or files extension), than disabling autoplay doesn't prevent it because you will someday play / view it from explorer or other application.

BTW, you can't disable autorun by disabling autoplay, so basically, disabling autoplay isn't a good way to prevent / minimize virus thread.

Installing antivirus and anti-spyware is the best way to prevent virus threads. And now, you can get free antivirus and anti-spyware, so that you don't even need to disable autoplay and autorun to make your PC safer. Antivirus still check your files even you open it using autoplay function, so you don't need to worry

And there isn't option called "system" under "administrative template" in my xp. Yordan, could you check this too? BTW, i'm using winblows XP professional 2002 SP3.

I suggest this tutorial's title should change to "Disable Autoplay In XP Personal (maybe) version 200* SP*"

 

 

 

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^^winblows funny

Putting a blank-read only file named autorun.inf prevents from malicious scripts auto executing. It can only prevent scripts with extension scr from executing, but wouldn't protect against viruses (obviously). Basically those malicious scr files modify folders, changes the attribute of the folders to hidden and creates dummy folders. I have been using this method, and it works. It prevents he modification of autorun file.

I haven't come across any USB viruses. May be, because I have good antivirus installed with regular updates.

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Nice idea. But i don't need to do that because my home pc OS is kubuntu. autorun.inf won't be run.

it would be nice if takerraj also post about how to disable autorun.inf. AFAIK, you have to edit your registry, but if you know a better way then please shara

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@Yordan,
Thank you! for posting my article. I didn't actually mean to post it twice. I am surprised to see that I have posted it successfully. Because in mandriva when I posting that article I lost internet connection. So I thought it wasn't reached to you. That's why I posted twice. Sorry for that. I didn't copy it from any where. This my own article that I thought will help others too. The autoplay image I used was others. I used to give readers an idea on how virus uses autoplay option. If there are any mistakes I have done please tell me. I'll correct it next time when I post. Thank you!

@Akashi
Yes, autorun and autoplay are two different things. But worms and viruses use autoplay also. In the first image you can see the first "Open folder with" is due to an unknown publisher (malware) and the second "open folder with" option is of windows. In this way viruses use autoplay option. As spencer said we can create a blank autorun.inf. Addition to that we have to disable all access to the autorun.inf that we have created. This way no virus can modify the autorun.inf that we've created. For more information on how to do this please see the link below :
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...26063847AA4FVPs

BTW, See the image below :



You can see System right! I'm using xp pro 2002 sp3.

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Disabling Autorun under Windows has been one of the first things I do to my computer after a reformat for years. A good article to explore each feature, Autorun vs. AutoPlay, can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRun. My preferred method of disabling Autorun under XP is to use the Tweak UI Power Toy provided by Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx). In addition to a section devoted to Autorun, you can also change many other hidden UI features, all from one program.

Vista doesn’t have the same Tweak UI program so you will have to do it the long way.
1. Open the Control Panel
2. Double click Hardware and Sound
3. Double click Autoplay
4. Set all to Take no action
I’m on XP at the moment so the instructions may need minor adjustment, see http://www.vistarevisited.com/2008/05/31/d...are-infections/ for more information.

Microsoft recently released a patch on February 24, 2009 to correct a bug in the Autorun feature. Apparently setting some registry keys to disable Autorun didn’t really disable Autorun. The patch is currently available via Windows Update and if you update regularly, you should already have it. The full Microsoft Security Advisory can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...ory/967940.mspx.

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Nice info, might be its time to change the title of this post as disable autoplay on xp and vista.Thanks for adding the vista tutorial too.

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Thanks mate
Disable Autoplay In Xp To Reduce The Impact Of Usb Virus

Thanks for the post. I've been searching for this fix for a while now.

The other crapholes that just come around and argue are idiots. You post a fix to a certain problem and then come and try to tell you how you didn't address all of the issues that were not really part of the problem.

The problem was to disable the AutoPlay. The solution was presented. Seems to have worked so far. My other solution did not work.

TY again :D

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