When you load a CD into a CD drive, Windows automatically loads the contents of the CD and/or begins to play it. This is the Autorun Feature. It is a handy feature when you are playing a music CD, installing a program, or playing a game. It can be a problem for CDs with large amounts of data on them (since Autorun reads through your entire CD while you wait) or when you just want to grab a file off a disk.

There are a couple of different ways you can disable the CD Autorun Feature. You can permanently disable the autorun or you can disable it on a situation-by-situation basis.

To disable the Autorun Feature "on the fly," all you need to do is hold down the SHIFT key after you put the CD-ROM in the tray. This will stop the Autorun only for this loading. The next time you change CDs, the Autorun Feature will operate, unless you again hold the SHIFT key down while the CD is loading.

To disable the Autorun Feature permanently, you will need to edit your registry. To do this you should:

• Open the Run command from Start Menu. Type regedit in the Open text box and click OK.
  
  
• Navigate to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDROM.
  
  
• Double click on the AutoRun entry in the right pane of the Registry Editor.
  
  
• Change the 1 to a 0.
  
  
• Close the Registry Editor.
  
  
• Restart your computer.
  
  

Now when you put a new CD into the CD drive, it will not try to play the CD automatically. You will have to open Windows Explorer or another viewer to see and run the files on the disk.

If you decide you want to enable the Autorun Feature again, just follow the above instructions again and change the 0 back to a 1.