How to disable autostart flash drive in Windows - an exhaustive instruction.

The variety of malware is very significant. And with each type of viruses it is necessary to fight by its own method. In this article, we will deal with only one type of "malware", almost traditional practice among the viruses was to write to the startup. The scheme of the malicious program on points is as follows:

Option 1

You are editing a working document from a flash drive on an already "infected" home PC.

Option 2

The virus is registered in the autoloading of your flash drive, and after you bring the flash drive to another computer, immediately when the drive is installed in the USB-socket, another PC is infected. Most likely, such a distribution mechanism was provided to bypass the protection of corporate networks where a reliable firewall is installed, but the system administrator did not take care of the local security of workstations and employees can bring any removable media.

Distribution of such programs is due to the fact that by default in Windows XP / 7 / Vista, autoloading from removable media is allowed. This is made more for the convenience of the user. But this phrase is more suitable saying "well-intentioned paved road to hell." Fortunately, this vulnerability is easily covered by the appropriate settings if you are wondering how to disable the autorun flash drive and get rid of another problem in Windows. For systems of different generations (Windows XP / Vista and Seven), this procedure is slightly different. So, let's get started.

In Windows XP (in Windows 2000 and the Server family everything is done according to the same principle), you must go to the Group Policy Editor. The most convenient way to act through the script is gpedit.msc, which is run from the Start menu> Run. There you should select the "Computer Configuration" subsection , and there are "Administrative Templates" in it, where you should see the "System" sub-item. You need a policy setting under the name "Disable Startup." By default it is not set, it should be set to "Off" and select "All drives" from the drop-down menu, and then click "OK". Now put the flash drive into the socket and make sure that nothing starts. So you solved the problem, how to disable autostart flash drive. More than one virus spreading this way will not disturb you.

In the family of operating systems Windows 7 (excluding Basic and Home editions, where everything is done in the previous way or through the registry), this operation is slightly different in the direction of even more convenience of how to disable autostart flash drive. After all, the developers of Microsoft largely took into account the weaknesses of the previous generation systems. Perhaps the most important of them is the inconvenient location of quite important settings, which includes disabling autorun, so the simple question of how to disable the autorun of USB flash drive Windows 7, is solved quickly. You just need to go to the menu item "Autostart" icon "All items of the control panel," which is obviously located in the "Control Panel." We remove the checkbox "Use autorun for all media and devices", click "Save". You will need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

This could end our story, if there was not another universal way to turn off autorun. Of course, it's about using Registry Editor. The settings relating to autorun are scattered in three different places. First, disable the CD-ROM, if there is, because this component of the system is considered obsolete and in many PCs, including desktops and netbooks, it is not used at all. To do this, set the value (0) to the Autorun parameter in the SYSTEM hive (in the HKEY LOCAL MACHINE subkey) by the following path: CurrentControlServices> Services> CD-ROM.

Then in the same section, go to another bush - SOFTWARE. After all, the setup also needs autoloading removable media in explorer.exe, the shell of the system. Change the value of the NoDriveTypeAutoRun parameter to (FF). Its location is Microsoft> Windows> Current Version> Policies> Explorer. This value is not the only thing that we need to change. To completely disable autorun, the second parameter of the same name will also have to be assigned a value (FF). At this time, go to the registry subkey HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but exactly the same path as the previous one. The problem of how to remove the autorun flash drive, is solved finally. For the changes to take effect, you will need to restart the computer.