DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
 

Questions & Answers for the Week of

August 29, 2010

Q. I bought an external hard drive and when I plug it in to one of my XP computers it installs the driver and backup up program. On another XP computer, it won't install the backup program, just the driver. Why?

A. If the external hard drive automatically installs the backup program on one computer it should install it on another computer providing the computer is configured properly and has not been changed from its default settings. Since it did install correctly on one computer all I can speculate is that there is a problem on your other computer that is preventing it from working properly. It could be something as simple as a wrong setting to a serious corrupt file. I suspect that your computer just has the autorun feature turned off.

NOTE: Microsoft seems to interchange the terms autorun and autoplay and in this instance, they both refer to the same thing.
Many security type programs will turn this off automatically, some with the Group Policy Editor which just makes registry changes. But before I get into that, you can try the following: Plug in the external hard drive, then click My Computer to open explorer and right click on the drive. Select Properties then the AutoPlay tab.

In the top space, choose Mixed Content, then check the dot in front of "Prompt me each time...........". click OK. Now when you plug in a USB device that contains an autorun file, you will be asked you what you want to do, and you can choose run the program or view the files.
If this doesn't fix your problem, then the autorun feature may be turned off in the Group Policies.

If you are using XP Professional, you can use the Group Policy editor. Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK. Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then click System. In the Settings pane, right-click Turn off Autoplay, and then click Properties. Click Not Configured, and then select All drives in the Turn Off Autoplay box to enable Autorun on all drives. Click OK to close the Turn off Autoplay Properties dialog box. Restart the computer.
If you are using XP Home version, you will not have the Group Policy editor and will have to make the change manually in the registry. It is important to remember that this method makes modifications to the registry. Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully.
Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK. Locate and then click the following entry in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\
Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutorun
If this value NoDriveTypeAutoRun is there, right-click and then click Delete. This will enable the autorun feature. If this value or the Explorer key is not there, then the autorun feature has not been turned off in the group policies.
If neither of the above fixes the autorun feature, then you probably have something amiss with your operating system. Possibly a corrupt file that will not be so easy to fix.
One further note. In Vista and Windows 7, the autorun feature is controlled in the Control Panel and there are many more possible settings for the user to configure.