5 ms·

I no longer recall all the things I've done over the past some years to beat down Autorun and AutoPlay on this Windows machine. /irony Although I haven't read

I no longer recall all the things I've done over the past some years to beat down Autorun and AutoPlay on this Windows machine. /irony Although I haven't read through it, yet (or at least, not today/recently), this document seems pertinent (in both the depth and the currency of its information): How to disable the Autorun functionality in Windows (Article ID: 967715 - Last Review: June 10, 2011 - Revision: 6.3) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715 P.S. Although I've looked at a few other googled documents, combining the above cited document with this Wikipedia entry provides a rather useful overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRun In my current case, if I wish to take advantage of the Dropbox beta's features, I will need to renable Autorun on my Windows XP machine as on Windows XP AutoPlay triggering is dependent upon Autorun being active. I had to check the registry in order to confirm that Autorun is currently, entirely deactivated. The Group Policy Editor was not showing any entries -- perhaps because the registry override that is present pre-empted any GPE control over same?

pasbesoin 15y ago
Replying to self as I can no longer edit the parent. I can confirm that the beta/process is working for me on my Windows XP Pro SP3 machine. I had to gather/reacquaint myself with some knowledge to make it work. In particular, I had Autorun disabled, which on XP -- but apparently not Vista and 7 -- also preempts triggering of AutoPlay. AutoPlay is required for the Dropbox functionality involved in this beta and the space allocation increase. So, I had to reenable Autorun before proceeding with the Dropbox beta and the upload that increases space allocation. Here are the steps I put together from my own knowledge, online references (see my parent), and several comments particularly on the Dropbox thread(s): -- ~ I started with a blank SD card. I created a subdirectory named "DCIM" on it and put four MPEG2 files onto it having .mpg extensions and a total size a bit over 5 GB, where the extra size over 5 GB was still within the free/unused capacity I already had in my Dropbox account. I also put one additional MPEG2/.mpg file in the root of the SD card. I didn't know whether it would be recognized by Dropbox's upload process, but I thought it might help determine whether AutoPlay was renabled. ~ Set system restore point before editing Registry and proceding with the rest. Run (less quotes): "%SystemRoot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe" ~ Change Registry settings. In my case, this involved changing the "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" entry under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\". I changed its value from 0xff to 0x91 . See the MS document linked in my parent post for more detail on this, but note in particular that this particular Registry entry also has a machine level counterpart at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutoRun . Note also that other values may have been used to alter Autorun behavior -- again, see the MS documentation. ~ Reboot ~ Test whether AutoPlay is working by inserting the SD card in to the card reader. AutoPlay triggers. ~ Back up existing Dropbox content (7zip to an archive file). ~ Install the Dropbox beta (for me, it is at version 1.3.15). ~ Per some comments in the Dropbox discussion linked elsewhere in this HN thread (ok, for example, here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?page=2&id=53808 http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?page=2&id=53808) , copy C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Dropbox\bin\msvcr71.dll to C:\Program Files\Dropbox\msvcr71.dll to bypass a bug. ~ Reboot ~ Insert the SD card. ~ Select from the AutoPlay prompt the option to have Dropbox find/upload photos (I forget the exact phrasing). -- Now, I don't want Autorun (nor particularly AutoPlay) active, so after all this finishes, I'll go back in and change that Registry entry back to 0xff. (Like some other commentors suggested, I would prefer to have an option on the Dropbox menu that I can manually trigger.) Other observations: The upload (on this Comcast residential connection) is SLOW. This has been a consistent experience for me when uploading large volumes to Dropbox. The Dropbox system tray button popup describes Dropbox "indexing" the files. This seemed to slow my (admittedly old) system down significantly while it was taking place. Dropbox found/imported the four .mpg files located within the "DCIM" subdirectory on the SD card. It did not find or import the fifth .mpg file that was located at the card's root.

pasbesoin 15y ago

Replying to self as I can no longer edit the parent. I can confirm that the beta/process is working for me on my Windows XP Pro SP3 machine. I had to gather/reacquaint myself with some knowledge to make it work. In particular, I had Autorun disabled, which on XP -- but apparently not Vista and 7 -- also preempts triggering of AutoPlay. AutoPlay is required for the Dropbox functionality involved in this beta and the space allocation increase. So, I had to reenable Autorun before proceeding with the Dropbox beta and the upload that increases space allocation. Here are the steps I put together from my own knowledge, online references (see my parent), and several comments particularly on the Dropbox thread(s): -- ~ I started with a blank SD card. I created a subdirectory named "DCIM" on it and put four MPEG2 files onto it having .mpg extensions and a total size a bit over 5 GB, where the extra size over 5 GB was still within the free/unused capacity I already had in my Dropbox account. I also put one additional MPEG2/.mpg file in the root of the SD card. I didn't know whether it would be recognized by Dropbox's upload process, but I thought it might help determine whether AutoPlay was renabled. ~ Set system restore point before editing Registry and proceding with the rest. Run (less quotes): "%SystemRoot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe" ~ Change Registry settings. In my case, this involved changing the "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" entry under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\". I changed its value from 0xff to 0x91 . See the MS document linked in my parent post for more detail on this, but note in particular that this particular Registry entry also has a machine level counterpart at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutoRun . Note also that other values may have been used to alter Autorun behavior -- again, see the MS documentation. ~ Reboot ~ Test whether AutoPlay is working by inserting the SD card in to the card reader. AutoPlay triggers. ~ Back up existing Dropbox content (7zip to an archive file). ~ Install the Dropbox beta (for me, it is at version 1.3.15). ~ Per some comments in the Dropbox discussion linked elsewhere in this HN thread (ok, for example, here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?page=2&id=53808 http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?page=2&id=53808) , copy C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Dropbox\bin\msvcr71.dll to C:\Program Files\Dropbox\msvcr71.dll to bypass a bug. ~ Reboot ~ Insert the SD card. ~ Select from the AutoPlay prompt the option to have Dropbox find/upload photos (I forget the exact phrasing). -- Now, I don't want Autorun (nor particularly AutoPlay) active, so after all this finishes, I'll go back in and change that Registry entry back to 0xff. (Like some other commentors suggested, I would prefer to have an option on the Dropbox menu that I can manually trigger.) Other observations: The upload (on this Comcast residential connection) is SLOW. This has been a consistent experience for me when uploading large volumes to Dropbox. The Dropbox system tray button popup describes Dropbox "indexing" the files. This seemed to slow my (admittedly old) system down significantly while it was taking place. Dropbox found/imported the four .mpg files located within the "DCIM" subdirectory on the SD card. It did not find or import the fifth .mpg file that was located at the card's root.