Autorun Icons disappeared (Win 7 Ultimate x64)

Lotharta · 06 Mar 2011

Hi,

Yesterday I spent the morning fiddling around with Windows a bit - I've been on W7 since not too long after it came out, and have never ever used "Restore Previous Version", so I decided to disable it using gpedit. Then, I noticed I'd got a virus (which had disabled my antivirus - hooray!) and so spent the afternoon fixing that.

The virus is gone now, no problem, but during either (a) the gpedit, (b) a result of the virus, or (c) a result of something else, my autorun icons have disappeared.

I have a USB external hard drive with an autorun.inf giving ICON=Samsung.exe and it's always worked wonderfully on Win 7. Now, it just has a standard hard drive icon. Likewise, ALL CDs and DVDs I put into my DVD drive just have the standard CD-in-drive icon, rather than their custom icons.

I know I can (and have) associate a custom icon with the external USB drive via the registry, so it has its icon back, but I'd like to have the DVD drive display the icons for the DVDs.

I have absolutely no idea what could have done this - I've spent the morning checking if I could have done anything silly in gpedit but can't see anything. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Edit: I've tried doing simple things like resetting the icon cache, and no luck.

Also, it's clearly Autoplay related - when I put in a CD/DVD, the autorun window detects the drive as pictures (usually) and suggests I open them with Picasa or Import using Windows. It completely ignores the autorun.inf file, it seems.

Brink · 06 Mar 2011

Hello Lotharta, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Is the ICO file that the autorun.inf file references still on the external device and CD/DVDs root directory?

Drive Icon - Change

Lotharta · 06 Mar 2011

Hi,

Thanks for the welcome!

Yes, they are. I tried creating a new autorun.inf from scratch and using a new icon, and it still doesn't work (plus of course, it doesn't work on any of my CDs either, and they're not writeable).

I've plugged the USB drive into another computer and the icon appears, so the drive is fine. I've tried making a new user on the computer with the problem, and it still happens, so it's not a per-user setting. I'm completely out of ideas!

(Also: Option 2 from the link you posted is what I am _now_ using for the external USB drive, so that's fine - but as I said, still no luck with CDs.

)

Brink · 06 Mar 2011

Are the CD/DVDs mastered or live file system when created?

After saving the ICO and autorun.inf files to the root of the CD/DVD, did you open and close the CD/DVD drive for it to use the newly added icon afterwards?

Here is the ICO and autorun.inf files in a ZIP file below that I just tested on a newly created "live file system" DVD that worked for me. If you like, you can use them to test on yours to see if it may work as well.

Autorun Icons disappeared (Win 7 Ultimate x64)-computer.jpg

Autorun Icons disappeared (Win 7 Ultimate x64)-dvd.jpg

Lotharta · 06 Mar 2011

The CD/DVD ones are not burnt discs (mostly I've tried various computer games - all legitimate store-bought), and obviously haven't changed since two days ago (when it all worked perfectly).

I gave your inf & ico a try, but no luck.

I thought I'd try safe mode to see if it was something running causing a problem, but of course safe mode completely ignores autorun. Heh.

Brink · 06 Mar 2011

You might see if changing the drive letter of the CD/DVD drive to some other unused drive letter may toggle it to have a custom icon be used again.

Arc · 06 Mar 2011

Hi mate ! Have you checked this location ? Is there everything is set up properly ?

Autorun Icons disappeared (Win 7 Ultimate x64)-capture.jpg

Moreover, you should try SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker . It may fix your issue .

But my experience says a that a simple installation of PowerDVD fixes such autorun issue . Though I dont know why

It happened for me a few times .... and installing powerdvd made everything normal. I have got it bundled with my optical drive, though I dont use it .

Lotharta · 06 Mar 2011

Brink said:

You might see if changing the drive letter of the CD/DVD drive to some other unused drive letter may toggle it to have a custom icon be used again.

Unfortunately not! Thanks for the ideas, I'd not thought of any of these.

Arc said:

Hi mate ! Have you checked this location ? Is there everything is set up properly ?

Moreover, you should try SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker . It may fix your issue .

But my experience says a that a simple installation of PowerDVD fixes such autorun issue . Though I dont know why

It happened for me a few times .... and installing powerdvd made everything normal. I have got it bundled with my optical drive, though I dont use it .

Hi! Yeah, the autorun stuff is set up correctly - the problem is that everything is being detected as having the main content "pictures" (maybe not with a disc with no pictures on, but all the discs with autorun.inf files I have have images on).

I'm downloading the PowerDVD trial and running the sfc scan. Will restart after the scan, see if it's done anything, if not try PowerDVD. Then I'll post back. Thanks!

Lotharta · 06 Mar 2011

Hey,

Unfortunately, no luck. The sfc scan found several corrupt files but repaired them all. I installed PowerDVD, restarted, and no luck.

Tried the DVD I'm testing with (Neverwinter Nights 2) in another PC just to be sure, and yeah, it's detected as "software and games" and has an icon. In my PC, it's detected as "pictures" and has no icon.

Very odd.

Brink · 06 Mar 2011

Lotharta,

Well, short of doing a clean install, you could try doing a repair install of Windows 7 if you have a retail Windows 7 installed without SP1 installed yet.