Autoplay Madness

Have you tried tying in web sites in Auto Play to disable it?

madmartian said:

In Autoplay settings:
Autoplay is off
Removable Drive is set to "take no action"
Memory Card is set to "take no action"

Those are the only three settings in the Autoplay Settings view.



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This is what pops up when I stick the USB stick in. The press kit it is trying to bring up is no longer online in that filepath so it just brings up a 404 error page in Chrome, my default browser.



Really creepy that they were able to bypass all AutoPlay and autorun policy settings. There must be some way to prevent this action.

There is.

Remove the file on the USB stick that is trying to access the website. You can put other things on the USB stick to "test with".
It appears that you're seeing a conflict between your Windows settings and a file trying to access a website.

Try putting something like... a setup file for say... a driver, on the USB stick. See if THAT auto plays.

madmartian said:

I'm not trying to fix this one particular USB stick. I am trying to fix the operating system of the computer. I'm sure reformatting the USB would stop *THAT* USB drive from doing this - but *OTHER* USB sticks - perhaps with more nefarious goals - could still run automatically. So I need to keep this USB stick as-is for testing and fix the OS so that this USB stick no longer runs automatically.

I did find a third place for editing autoplay settings. But this too did not fix the problem.

What I'm trying to say is that it appears that you have found a file type that Windows does NOT account for in it's auto play rules.
The solution might be to disable the auto play in your firewall, which is a much more general rule. It would possibly cover ALL file types.

I use a 3rd party firewall (Bitdefender Internet Security). I have it set to block ALL access to the internet by default. I then ALLOW only certain things through the firewall.

In other words, I don't think this is an auto play function, I think it's a firewall function.

The file in question, isn't trying to... "play", it's trying to access the internet. You would need to use the right Windows tool for the job.

madmartian said:

The firewall setting could block it from the internet, but it would not block bringing up a run window and typing something in. I don't know how they are doing that. It should not be possible.

I don't understand how they are doing it either. However, the fact is, you have a file that's trying to access the internet.
If you want to prevent that, use the firewall. When you have files that try to... "run" use the auto play rules.

As I mentioned above... there are some file types with methods I don't understand. In those cases, I try to use the tool, that prevents what those files are trying to accomplish. In this case, that would be internet access.

I believe you've found a file type that functions outside the auto play rules. The file in question may not BE malicious, but it is behaving like a malicious file would.

I would block it in your firewall, and then submit it to Microsoft.


If for some reason you NEED to deal with files of that type, I would zip them, until you need them.



You might try the free version of Revo Uninstaller. It has a Tools > AutoRuns section.
IF that file shows up in Revo, then you can block it. If it doesn't, well then you have a very good uninstaller program.

Revo Uninstaller Free - Remove unwanted programs easily