Is there *really* an Auto-Insert Notification setting for XP-SP3?

Mayayana wrote:

| I can say that this is the answer. Setting this "Autorun"
| registry value to zero (0) will stop this irritating, constantly
| flashing LED.

That's *very* interesting. But what does the hard disk activity
light have to do with the CD?

Because the hard-drive LED light will flash when-ever the motherboard
drive controller is active. And the drive controller is active
when-ever the OS is asking it to perform some action on an attached
drive.

Optical drives and hard drives are connected to the drive controller (be
they both SATA or IDE).

In this case, both the hard drive and CD drive are SATA, and they're
connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard.

Are you saying that shutting off *CD* auto-insert shuts off the
hard disk light?

I'm saying that by default, XP checks the CD-rom drive once-per-second,
all day, 24/7. That's how the Auto-play function is invoked - as a
result of XP knowing that something has changed in the CD drive.

If you turn off this once-per-second checking (with the above registry
key) then autoplay can't work - regardless what your GUI auto-play
settings are.

And the LED will no longer flash once-per-second for no apparent reason.

This doesn't turn off or disable the functionality of the hard-drive
LED. The LED will still flash when-ever some drive activity happens.

If you do that then doesn't it also prevent the CD
drive from recognizing an inserted CD?

Yes - and that is something I can live with very easily. I can go days,
weeks or months without putting a disk in the CD drive.

And even when I do put in a CD disk, I end up cancelling the auto-play
junk and I bring up the file explorer to do what-ever I need to do with
the disk.

Thank you for that detailed explanation. I don't think
I want to disable the CD drive, but I have been wondering
for a very long time why that disk light keeps flashing. It's
nice to finally have an explanation.

Mayayana wrote:

Thank you for that detailed explanation. I don't think
I want to disable the CD drive,

The CD drive is not being disabled with this registry setting. It
continues to work just fine.

| Thank you for that detailed explanation. I don't think
| I want to disable the CD drive,
|
| The CD drive is not being disabled with this registry setting. It
| continues to work just fine.

Ah, you're right. I changed the setting and rebooted.
What a pleasure not to have that light blinking constantly!
Now if I could just get Online Armor to stop it's nonsensical,
periodic attempt to open files that don't exist... Originally I
thought that was causing the blinking. But now with CD
polling shut off I can run Filemon and watch Online Armor
trying to open files, and it actually doesn't cause the light
to blink.

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:46:41 -0500, XP Guy wrote:

Uwe Sieber wrote:

The setting has the misleading name "AutoRun" and is found under
KLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...try/30300.mspx

Alright. Yes - thankyou Uwe.

I can confirm that setting the "Autorun" value from 1 to 0 at this
registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Cdrom

Will turn off the Auto-Insert Notification process or service.

And now for all of you spread across the internet, across many years,
who have asked:

"why does my hard drive LED constantly flash once per second"

I can say that this is the answer. Setting this "Autorun" registry
value to zero (0) will stop this irritating, constantly flashing LED.

Now why this info is hidden or not disclosed as applicable to Windows XP
- I don't know. All the references I can find to that key value says
that it applies to Win-2K.

I wondered where the blinking light had gone! I'd disabled this key with a
tweaking tool but not realised the side-effect.
Actually, I'd assumed that the the activity was due to one instance of
svchost.exe - the one that has a lot of processes - incrementing I/O Write
Bytes once per second; that is still happening (only when connected to
t'internet) and I've never managed to find out why - any ideas, please?
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway