Yesterday, I had some troubles with the autoplay in Windows XP. For some reasons, the autoplay function didn’t work on 200 desktops in the organization. A real problem, because we are planning to enable DVD-playing, and the autoplay is an essential point in this project.
The problem: When inserting a DVD, the title didn’t show up in the Explorer, and I didn’t get a pop-up or notification. I couldn’t right-click -> Play DVD, because the option didn’t show up. The autoplay was enabled (Prompt me each time to choose an action), as shown below:
Trying, trying: In the early days, we used to image all our desktops with Ghosts , so I suspected there was something wrong with the DVD-drivers. After reinstalling, deleting, deleting hidden devices, installing again, the problem was still there, so the DVD-drivers were not the problem.
Then I tried the Autoplay Repair Wizard , but all it said was:
>> Repair << [Autoplay V2 Event]
Step: No steps to take.
Result: This AutoPlay setting cannot be fixed.
Either the device is malfunctioning, or the wizard cannot
determine the problem.
>> Required action: The wizard found problems but cannot fix them -> None
Then I tried Google, and guess what: I found a ridicolous but working solution for the problem. Somehow, a register setting named Allocatecdrom was set to 1, instead of 0. I’m totally confused why this setting was different from every other installation, but I’m glad it took me only one day.
For more information, take a look at a Knowledge-base article from Microsoft, written for NT4
