There is also a delay in the options you can specify to start the autorun processing of between 0 and 60 seconds (default is 5 seconds). When you insert your USB stick you will also get a tooltip with some information about the the drive such as name, drive letter, file system, serial number, used and available space. Unlike some other utilities that insert their own custom autorun files on the the drive, APO USB Autorun recognizes the standard autorun.inf used by Windows and processes it in the way you would expect by launching the required program. This is quite a useful autorun enabler for USB flash drives and also has a number of other functions thrown in for good measure. But for those of us that like the function and wish to use it, there are a few 3rd party utilities around to help bring back Windows autorun to USB removable devices.

When using a USB stick though, the best you’re likely to get is the option to open it up and view the files.Īutoplay is nice and everything, but what about if you want your Windows to recognize and process the autorun.inf file on a USB flash drive every time you insert it into your computer? Of course security conscious people might not like the idea of this, and enabling autorun is not something inexperienced users should be doing, especially if devices don’t come from a fully trusted source. For instance, if you insert a blank CD Windows will ask if you want to write to it, or a music CD will give you the option to play the contents. The options then differ depending on what type of media Windows has detected. Usually when you plug in your USB flash drive or device, you’ll get the Autoplay window asking what would you like to do next. USB drives when they are inserted haven’t really had the autorun.inf file fully processed since early versions of Windows XP, and instead the USB autorun launching is either included in the Autoplay function or ignored altogether as happens in Vista and 7.

You can still get your Windows DVD or game CD to launch automatically or via double clicking on the drive icon. The Autorun functionality has been reduced in more recent versions of Windows for security purposes and in Windows 7 the autorun.inf file is almost completely ignored for all media except CD’s and DVD’s.

Create an autorun file