Disabled Autorun.inf

malonetc

Autorun has been disabled on the laptop. I choose this option recommended to prevent viruses, by some software I downloaded. Now, my XP disk will not load automatically and my laptop boot is not working. The autorun setting for the CD is set to 1 so it has to be a global setting that is stopping the file running. While I intended to stop it on USBs, I never thought about the CD being affected.

A 'layman's solution would be appreciate thought I will risk regedit if it is a minimal change, thx

FSL

If the laptop won't boot and you want to use the CD to repair it then just make sure that the CD is the first boot option in the bios or if a boot menu is displayed choose to boot from the CD.

Disabling autorun just means the autorun.inf file is not executed. Open it in notepad and just run whatever the command is, typically setup.exe.

malonetc

Thanks for speedy reply but I don't know how to call up the boot sequence to amend it. The laptop does not offer Boot from CD when I use F8 to call up the boot options. This may have been removed also. Any further advice on how to get around the problem.

Thanks

FSL

I am not sure what your problem is. Disabling autorun has nothing to do with booting and in my honest opinion autorun is the most stupid function ever implemented.

What you want is the boot menu not the Windows boot options which you get by pressing F8. It is probably a different function key, F2 is the key for boot options on one of my laptops. The boot options will list all devices with bootable media inserted, e.g. hard drives USB sticks cd/dvd drives, and you choose which one to boot from.

The media must be in the drive before turning on/rebooting the machine.

malonetc

Thanks again FSL. F2 seems to switch my laptop off. I'll try each F key in turn and see if any do the trick. I checked the manual online for any description of the F Keys but it only describes use of these keys in conjunction with the Fn key !!!

This isn't always 100% but generally the boot menu would be:

Generic PhoenixBIOS (Acer, Toshiba, Fujitsu Siemens): F12
Dell: F12
Sony and Samsung: Esc
Asus: F8
HP/Compaq: F9

Some machines might also use F11.

malonetc

Tried all the F'n keys and none work. As this laptop was configured for staff by a tech support group, they may well have removed this completely to prevent people like me booting with any other system than the approved one.

I did locate something on the net that gives very muddled instruction (very poor English). I'll try to make sense of it and try that next.

Thanks all for being so responsive, appreciate it

Capt'n Midnight

malonetc wrote: »

s this laptop was configured for staff by a tech support group, they may well have removed this completely to prevent people like me booting with any other system than the approved one.

game over.

if you figure out how to bypass the security
it isn't your laptop and if you break it there maybe trouble ahead

check your employment contract , there is probably a little clause somewhere to nail you if you mess about with IT

malonetc

Agreed this would be the case if I was still employed but I'm retired and got the PC as part of the 'package'.

Thanks for the feedback

Alun

It's close to impossible that the IT dept. could have disabled BIOS access completely, put a password on it maybe, but not disabled it altogether.

You do realise that you have to press one of the keys mentioned above, just after the PC has completely restarted, i.e. not resumed from sleep, and before Windows starts to load?

Just after you power it on, you should briefly see some kind of start up screen, probably just white text on a black background, and most times there will be a list somewhere on the screen saying "Press F2 for Setup, ESC for Boot Menu" or something along those lines.