To disable AutoPlay or AutoRun completely, you can either use the Local Group Policy Editor, if your version of Windows ships with that, or the Registry Editor. Hence, in essence, both are the same, with AutoPlay being the more advanced of the two. This also allowed leverage for USB-based storage media, extending the support beyond just optical disks.

Windows Vista onwards, Microsoft made room for more choices with the introduction of AutoPlay, which basically allowed the user to choose what program the AutoRun feature should call once invoked. When AutoRun was introduced, it basically allowed manufacturers of removable storage media (particularly CD/DVD ROMs) to incorporate an autorun.inf file within the device, which instructed the operating system which application (or executable) to call when you inserted the storage device. Essentially, AutoRun and AutoPlay are both the same, in that AutoPlay is the successor of AutoRun from older versions of Windows like XP, 2000 and earlier. In this article, we’ll tell you how to disable AutoPlay / AutoRun for good at a system-wide level.īefore we get to disabling the feature, let’s quickly take a glance at what these two terms mean, and whether there is any difference between the two or not. One such feature in Windows – the most widely used desktop operating system – is the AutoPlay (or AutoRun, as it was formerly known). However, good as the intention may be, in doing so, some of the convenience aspects beget a security risk, thereby exposing the system in question to security breaches and execution of undesired code. Thanks to hybrid operating systems like Windows 8, and the deep integration that Apple’s OS X and iOS enjoy, the difference between various hardware platforms is quickly diminishing, making room for a more streamlined, unified experience. As operating systems have evolved, their primary goal has always been to make computing easier for the end user, be it a tablet, a smartphone or a desktop computer.

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