when i'm using my laptop for live music, i can't afford to have the system suddenly choke up trying to read/decide what to do with newly attached media. i'm not clear why that can bring a system to a total stand still, except for bad design / legacy code. but here's a solution.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
add/edit REG_SZ key "NoDriveTypeAutoRun"
i use the value 0xFF (255) to disable all possible autoplay features.
Autoplay begins reading from a drive as soon as you insert media in the drive. As a result, the setup file of programs and the music on audio media starts immediately.
Data type Range, REG_SZ 0x0 - 0xFF
Default value is 0x95
This entry stores the setting of the Disable Autoplay Group Policy. Group Policy adds this entry to the registry when you enable the Hide these specified drives in My Computer policy. If you disable the policy or set it to Not configured, Group Policy deletes the entry from the registry and the system behaves as though the value is 0x95.
This entry is a bitmapped value. To disable Autoplay on a particular type of drive, set the bit representing that drive type to 1. To disable more than one type of drive, set the bits representing each type to 1, or sum the hexadecimal values of the representative bits.
Value Meaning
0x1 Disables Autoplay on drives of unknown type.
0x4 Disables Autoplay on removable drives.
0x8 Disables Autoplay on fixed drives.
0x10 Disables Autoplay on network drives.
0x20 Disables Autoplay on CD-ROM drives.
0x40 Disables Autoplay on RAM disks.
0x80 Disables Autoplay on drives of unknown type.
0xFF Disables Autoplay on all types of drives.
By default, Autoplay is disabled on removable drives, such as the floppy disk drive (but not the CD-ROM drive), and on network drives. The default value 0x95 (149) is the sum of 0x1, 0x81 (unknown types), 0x4 (floppy drives), and 0x10 (network drives).
also to change the value of this entry, use Group Policy. This entry corresponds to the Disable Autoplay policy (Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System).