Sometimes when you put in a music CD or a thumb drive Windows will pop up a Autoplay dialogue that is full of entries for programs which you may not use or may not even have installed. To clean them up you will need to install a free program from Microsoft called TweakUI [http://www.download.com/Tweak-UI/3000-2341_4-10002117.html?hhTest=1].

1.Run this program

2. Click the plus sign next to “My Computer”

3. Click the plus sign next to “AutoPlay”

4. Select “Handlers”

5. You’ll see a “Delete” button, but it doesn’t seem to work; instead, click the listing you want to get rid of and click the “Edit” button.

6. Uncheck all the drives listed under the “Supported Media” category.

7. Click the “Ok” button to save your changes and close TweakUI, and you should see your simplified AutoPlay dislogue the next time you pop in a CD or thumb drive.

TweakUI, however, doesn’t run in Windows Vista.

Enabling Autorun

1. In Windows, click Start,
and then choose Run.

2. Enter D: \autorun.exe (where D: is your CD-ROM drive. NB: There is a space between : and \)

Turning off Autorun

Option (A)

1. Click My Computer

2. Select the CD drive

3. Right click on the drive and select ‘Properties’

4. Select the ‘Autoplay’ tab

5. Select the ‘Take no action’ option from the ‘Select an action to perform’ menu and click ‘Apply’

Option (B)

1. Open the Registry Editor by clicking on ‘Start/Run’

2. Type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’

3. Navigate to the branch ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom’.

4. Now double-click on the ‘Autorun’ value in the right pane and set its value to 0.

5. In case the option is not already defined, you can create it by selecting ‘Edit|New|DWORD Value’. Name it ‘Autorun’.

6. For the changes to take effect, you will have to log out and log back in.

Caveat here: After you have made these registry changes, Windows will no longer be notified when you insert the CD.

1. Click Start button

2. Run…

3. Click Browse

4. Browse to the drive containing your CD-Rom, open the folder called Data and click on the file XXX.exe then click Open then OK. You will see a pop-up window asking if you want to install a codec. Click Install. The codec installs within a few seconds.

5. Click Start button, then Run… Click Browse and go to the drive containing your CD-Rom.

6. Change Files of Type… to read All Files.
7. Click on the file Start.hta (actual filename may be different from this)  then Open then OK.
8. The presentation should start.

Option A
1. Click My Computer

2. Select the CD drive

3. Right click on the drive and select Properties

4. Select the Autoplay tab

5. At the drop-down windows, click on the down arrow to select
the type of file/content you want to control such as ‘Music Files,
Pictures, Video files, etc.

6. Select ‘Select an action to perform’

7. Select the option from the menu

8. Click Apply

9. Click OK

My personal favorite burning software is Nero. It has got many advance features which are very useful like, for example, it’ll let you know beforehand if the number of files you want to burn has exceeded the capacity of your blank CD/DVD or not. However, strictly speaking, you do not need Nero really. You can also burn CD or DVD using Windows Media Player (which comes together with your Windows XP operating system).

This is how:

1. Insert a blank recordable CD into your computer’s CD burner

2. Go to My Music (or where you’ve stored your songs)

3.  Highlight the songs/files which you want to burn, and from the task list on the left, select “Copy to audio CD” (Note: If it’s not there it means your computer does not have a burner and therefore you won’t be able to burn).

4. Windows Media Player will now open, with the selected files already listed in the Burn List to the right. Simply click Start Burn at the bottom of the Burn List and your audio files will be written onto your CD.