I've had two different DANE-ELEC 3Systems flash drives which refuse to let go
and end up messing their formats because they keep trying to autoplay. THis
is not a virus and there are no visible autoplay files.
What is this? Any clues/fixes,comiserations?
"refuse to let go". There are actually metal porcupine fingers that
spring out of the USB drive to permanently affix it inside the USB port?
What really happens? What did you mean by that?
Auto-play and auto-run are actually two different behaviors but get
confused with each other, especially since Microsoft mixes up the terms
in their own documentation.
Auto-play pops up a dialog asking which handler to use based on what was
found on the removable media. If there are video and audio folders with
filetypes under them that are consistent with the structure for movie
CDs then auto-play will list those handlers that added themselves to the
registry to handle that media.
Auto-run requires an auto.inf file be present which lists the executable
that gets started when you insert the removable media. This is a
security hazard as it means something runs on your host without your
permission (i.e., YOU didn't decide to run the program). Infected USB
drives is how malware spreads across computers and why many companies,
libraries, kiosks, and other hosts get configured to disable the ports
to the removable media devices. Alternatively, the autorun function can
be disabled for all devices or for particular device types. Although it
provides convenience, autorun is a security risk and should be disabled.
"keep trying to autoplay". That happens only on new discovery of
removable media (media change detection) to have Windows, if enabled,
load the autorun.inf file and to also load and execute whatever program
that inf file specifies. Normally there would be only one execution of
the autorun.inf-specified program unless, of course, it were malware or
perhaps an installation program (where the install has failed and keeps
retrying). Hard to know what is actually happening on your host.
Vasos Panagiotopoulos ...
<snipped the SPAM fake signature block>
If you want to add off-topic fluff to your posts, make sure they are
AFTER the sigdash line ("-- \n"); else, it is not a signature and
instead spam fluff you added into the *body* of your post.
Keep signatures down to 4 lines maximum (and that includes any blank
lines) or don't even bother to add a signature since it rarely is
on-topic to your post and often obvious fluff.
If you're using a Usenet provider that is appending this spam crap to
your posts, find another Usenet provider that doesn't. Their spam
results your posts being spam. Stop being their spam affiliate; else,
expect to get treated as a spammer.
