Autorun issue

[Lucius Snow]

Hello all,

During the autorun process, two things occur : a window opens to ask an action (browse, play etc.) and another one is searching on the drive ("automatic execution") something to run.

Is it possible to keep the first process and disable the second one ?

Thank you.

[CoffeeFiend]

It sounds like the first is windows' reaction to inserting a disc, and the second is started by the autorun.inf on the disc. As far as I know, you can disable autoplay, but both would go away. Perhaps writing an app that uses handles shells notifications and monitors the SHCNE_MEDIAINSERTED event ID to parse the autorun.inf.... (but that feels like a lot of headaches for not much gained) Some times like that, I wish I'm wrong and that there's a way to do this otherwise

[Lucius Snow]

Cheers crahak.

Well if it's not possible (unless writing an app - and i'm not a developper lol), i'll just keep both process then

[CoffeeFiend]

Ever since I replied to this thread, I'm starting to think more and more to an app that I meant to write for over a year now... Because the default XP autorun thing really *does* suck.

I wanted to do something that would react differently depending on many things, and with lots of customizable events/actions depending on media type inserted and such, ie:

If DVD-Video inserted, launch favorite DVD player (ZoomPlayer/WinDVD/PowerDVD/Theatertek/...)

If DVD but not video, see if it's one big media file on it (HD DVDs mostly - as either .wmv .ts .avi or such) start selected player as well.

Otherwise (still for DVDs), look for autorun.inf, else look at files, and do something depending on what file type has more files (more pics -> pic viewer, more audio -> music app, with maybe confirmation depending on percentages of each types)

If it's a CD, look if it's a SVCD/VCD/miniDVD or has one big .avi/.mkv/.ogm file on it, if so, play it with appropriate/selected player

else look for cd audio, else look for data files like previously.

If it's a CF card (or whatever removable digicam media) then depending on prefs, start a slideshow (built-in with transitions and all), or move to a set directory on the HD with customizable paths (like %D for date, %T for time and such) with no user interaction required.

Something along those lines anyways. It was something I thought that most HTPCs could use, and possibly other PCs. In fact, just about anything would be better than XP's built-in annoying "scan the disc for a minute and come up with no good suggestions". I'm sure many more useful features could be added as well. It would also have to be controllable easily with a remote control and such (with girder and keypresses) Perhaps have a disc database too so once you tell it to do something with a disc, keep doing the same thing with it next time...

The bad thing is... It's not the style of project that is completed in a couple hour long coding session...

[MHz]

I do not understand?

If you go into the drive properties. You can change autorun and the events the make it respond to dvd, movies, data etc.

The system searches for an inf file for autorun. And it searches for the type of content on the cd, so it can diplay the correct run routine for the preselections in properties.

If your cd is continually searching, than it may be a problem with your drive or media?

[CoffeeFiend]

it's not "continually" not media issues, it's the program that's actually very slow and not too intelligent. It sucks enough that I can't stand it, so I just disable it altogether.

[MHz]

If you can improve on this autorun process. By all means let us know. Prob may be that some of this third party apps, that we install, may destroy the bliss. But there is only one way to find out. Please by all means.

[CoffeeFiend]

Like I said before, I doo know we could improve on it a lot, but it's quite the undertaking... It would require me to actually some spare time to code (at some point I had started making part of the logic, for a HTPC front end I've never got around to finish...)