Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Stop CD's Auto-Launching (P.S. Fuck You SONY)

Some of you may remember back in 2005 the big hoopla regarding the Sony Root Kit. In an effort to fight piracy, some Sony CD's included software that intercepted all interaction with the CD drive.

It all starts like this, you put your music CD into the CD drive of your computer, a prompt to install audio software will appear. However, by this point, the hidden software has already been installed without your permission. The software is normally undetectable because of various cloaking patches that it installs in Windows. Currently there is no know way to remove it without messing up your system. Antivirus programs are only able to remove the cloaking ability. Deleting the executable itself will disable your CD ROM drives.

As a result of this, I have come to the decision that SONY has no respect for the boundaries of your property. They invade your computer, putting your data and security at risk.

I will never buy another SONY product as long as I live. Fuck SONY. They don't care about their customers anymore, just their bottom line.

Your first line of defense is to stop CD's from launching everytime you put a CD in the drive. Some of you may recall my USB Stick post that U3 devices do the same thing by pretending to be CD's. This is originally thought of to be a convenience, but in light of the SONY fiasco, I will teach you how to turn it off.

First, download and install Tweak UI from Microsoft, here is the link to the XP version.

Run the program from START > Powertoys for Windows XP > Tweak UI

In the window that pops up, click on the + sign next to "My Computer". You will see AutoPlay in the list that appears. Click the + next to AutoPlay and select "Drives".

On the right hand side, you will be presented with a list of drives. A red question mark indicates that a drive does not exist.

Un-check the box next to your CD or DVD drive(s). Don't worry, this will not disable them, nor will it prevent you from installing software off of a CD. This just prevents Windows from arbitrarily installing software from a CD before you even know what's going on.

Now just click OK and close the window. A reboot of the system may be in order to get the new settings to kick in.

In the future if you really want the software to run, just right-click on the icon and select AUTOPLAY.

Now go out there, and keep on having fun (and stay away from SONY).

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

1 comments:

Sal C. said...

I ordered a 40 GB PS3 on December 25th 2007

I received my PS3 on December 27th, 2007

I'm loving all the PS3 features it offers....Despite the bastardness, it's a beautiful product.