[bha0424]

I've got an interesting problem. It's on my Dell P4 PC with Windows XP Home (with SP2) and a Toshiba CD/DVDW SD-R5372 DVD drive. Until recently, everything was working fine, but the following problem just started yesterday:

When I insert a video DVD (commercial or home-made), Windows starts up a copy of the Windows Explorer showing the contents of my "C:\Documents and Settings\myuserid" directory. It does not start up my default DVD media player, which is Windows Media Player (WMPLAYER.EXE).

I have gone through the process of clicking on "My Computer", right clicking on the DVD drive, selecting Properties, then selecting the Autoplay tab, selecting "DVD Movie" and setting the Action to "Play DVD movie using Windows Media Player". But still, when I insert a DVD, I get Windows Explorer showing me a copy of my "C:\Documents and Settings\myuserid" directory.

I can manually start WMPLAYER and play the DVD that way, so this isn't a case where I can not play a DVD at all. And the Autoplay function works correctly for Audio CDs.

But I still would like to know why the Autoplay function is mis-behaving when I insert a video DVD.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks

[wtxcowboy]

this happens all the time it seems. it's a registry issue & there's a fix 4 it. use the search tool & look 4 cd autoplay fix & u will get the link 2 a thread & try it. should work

[bha0424]

Are you referring to the AutoFix.exe utility? I downloaded that and it did not fix the problem. Tt says things like "AutoPlay V2 Event -- Problems", but when I click the "Repair" button it says "Either the device is malfunctioning or the wizard can not determine the problem." The log file that is generated says:

Test [Drive Notification] - Instance [D:\, Drive Type: 5]:
Result [Legacy Notification]: OK
Result [AutoPlay V2 Notification]: Problems {
Service (Silent)
Shell (Deaf) }
>> 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

I have also downloaded and run TweakUI, but that didn't help either.

I'm guessing this is a registry problem. I've got another computer in the house on which DVD autoplay works fine. I have tried comparing registry entries (for DVDAutoplay event handlers) and can't see any difference. So if it's a registry issue, I'm obviously not looking at the right entries.

Still stuck!

[wtxcowboy]

actually was referring 2 a registry fix i've seen posted here, finally found a copy of it:

The autoplay functions there were blocked as part of the procedures we did here. You can return those to the Windows default settings at this time by doing the following step, if you wish. This will allow autoplay for all drives such as CD-ROM and external drives.


Code:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explo rer]
"NoDriveAutoRun"=dword:0000000
"NoDriveTypeAutoRun"=dword:00000095

Open Notepad and copy and paste the above text (inside the box) into the text file. Now go to File > Save As and call it autofix.reg. Where it says "Files of Type", select All Files and click on Save. Exit Notepad, double-click on the file and ok the prompt asking if you wish to merge the file with your registry.

[wtxcowboy]

4 some odd reason there's a space in "Explorer" & there shouldn't be

[bha0424]

Thanks for the feedback. I applied the registry fix you suggested, but I'm still getting the same behavior -- load a DVD and instead of opening up WMPLAYER, Windows opens a copy EXPLORER.EXE on my "C:\Documents and Settings\myusername" directory.

Hmmm! Stubborn problem!

[wtxcowboy]

what happens if u have wmp open then insert a dvd into the drive? maybe it will assign wmp as the default player? good luck

[bha0424]

Interesting idea. When I do that, the Explorer view of my "My Documents" directory pops up over top of the WMP window. But when I close the Explorer window, WMP starts playing the DVD. Without WMP running, the same behavior as before is shown, so it looks like WMP is not getting set as the default player. Very curious!

Also, the last two nights (I leave my PC running overnight so it can run backups), my PC has crashed, something it has not done in a couple of years. The two crashes exhibited completely different symptoms. Maybe something has gotten corrupted and I need to start thinking about a Windows re-install. Ugh!

[wtxcowboy]

hmm, well reformatting would or should correct your autorun prob lol, but that's a last resort i imagine. it's not hard 2 do if u don't have a bunch of software & whatnot installed on ur pc. i reformatted mine about a month ago, almost painless. it was reinstalling all my toys that took 2 days lol.

[bha0424]

I use Norton Ghost to clone my C: drive to an external USB drive. The last time I did that was before all this kerfuffle started. So swapping drives should cause me no more grief than updating E-mail logs and a few other files that I have changed since the last Ghost clone. I think I'll do that. In the meantime, I'll mark this thread Solved -- in anticipation that the cloned drive will, in fact, solve the problem. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

Thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it!

bha0424