My Answer:

This is an update to Yesterday's suggestions.

A quick recap:

• I suggested a few ideas: use a CD buffering program, don't put anything in the CD drive so it doesn't spin up, and disable Auto Insert Notification for Windows 9x machines (details in previous newsletter).
   
• Doug L. recommend DisCD v0.99: it disables CD-ROM drives so that they won't spin up when Explorer or similar programs are loaded (for Windows NT/2000 only).
   
• Dave G. says that you can hold the shift key on your keyboard -- before the disc is inserted -- in order to stop the drive from spinning up ... at least, until you access the it from My Computer (works for all versions of Windows).

I woke up and checked my Inbox and found some new suggestions worth mentioning.

Kevin B. told me about a free program called TweakAll 3:

" I used TweakAll's setting to prevent Auto Run, and to restore it on machines where it has been disabled.

It is available from http://www.codeforge.co.uk "

John B. says you can do disable Auto Run with a with a registry edit (for Win2k / XP):

• Click Star t-> Run -> type in: regedit
   
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / System / CurrentControlSet / Services / Cdrom
   
• Change the value for Autorun to 0 (the numeric zero).

Chris B., along with a few others, highly recommended X-Setup:

" The best 'tweaker' I know and use is X-teq Systems' X-Setup.  It has a multitude of tweaks available for those who don't know where to find things in their file system (e.g. Control Panel), or don't want to play in the registry. You can select your own tweaks or use a built-in wizard. The program is available at:

http://www.xteq.com

It's definitely worth a try, and a lot of fun for the unapologetic tweaker. The CD drive settings are located in the System-File System-CD AutoStart section. "