I find it very annoying when I go home from work and plug my laptop into my external hard drive… The autoplay window always pops up and asks me what I want to do with the files, which may be fine the first time, but definitely isn’t after a year of that.

To get to the configuration screen for this setting, go to Start Menu \ Run and type in:

gpedit.msc

You will see the Group Policy window. You should select Administrative Templates \ System in the tree view:

You will see an item in the right side pane called “Turn off Autoplay”

Double click the item, and set the radio button to Enabled, and change the “Turn off Autoplay on” to All Drives.

Now you should be safe from the autoplay monster.

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Lowell is the founder and CEO of How-To Geek. He’s been running the show since creating the site back in 2006. Over the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people. Prior to starting How-To Geek, Lowell spent 15 years working in IT doing consulting, cybersecurity, database management, and programming work.
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