Prevent CDs from autoplaying, on the fly

Sometimes you don't want a CD to start playing, or running its program the moment you close your drive door. David Dorn shows you how to stop it

Whether it's right or wrong, many people make a backup copy of their audio CDs for use in the car and the home, so that the copy they've paid for can be archived, and kept pristine, clean and free from scratches. In order to do that, of course, you've got to put the original CD into your PC's CD drive.

That generally means that it will start playing - opening Media Player (or whichever player you use) and getting stuck into the first track, when what you really want to do is open up your CD Burning software and get copying.

So, to prevent this from happening, all you need to do is hold down one of the <shift> keys as you close the CD drive - and keep it held down until the CD drive LEDs stop flashing.

This works with audio CDs and also program CDs - it disables the autoplay function of Windows for so long as you hold down the shift key.

Handy, eh?

David Dorn