External devices not activating a popup when plugged in

Help please, My Windows 7 Toshiba laptop no longer provides popups when I plug in an external device via my available USB ports, ie: my external HDD for backups, my camera memory stick to upload my photo's etc.. when I plug in I get the audio noise which confirms something has been plugged in but I no longer get a pop up to invite me to take appropriate action like start a backup or upload my photo's. This process worked fine until a few weeks ago now nothing??

I'm no PC expert so any help to resolve this annoying problem will be greatly appreciated

Type autoplay into the start search box and hit enter.

Check to see that the box marked "Use autoplay for...." is checked.

Hi, Thank you for your response, I typed in 'autoplay' and can confirm the box is checked correctly. Although the sub heading of 'Pictures' was set to "ask me everytime" I still get no screen reaction after the audio response when the device is plugged in?? This worked fine for months and then suddenly stopped so it must be something I've done without realising it!!

Hi, I have run scf /scannow 3 times and got the same response "windows resource protection did not find any integrity violations". I have tried plugging in my card reader with my camera memory stick and still nothing seen on the desktop??

Pebbly, Hi, Thank you for your latest response, I will try a system restore tonight and let you know the outcome.

Update/closure..............

Before undertaking a system restore my brother advised me to check out the following within the registry, it transpired that within the explorer policies the autoplay was disabled, I changed the value from '0x000000FF (255)' (Disabled) to 0×00000091 (hexadecimal), restarted the PC and autoplay now works as before, how it got disabled in the first place is anyone's guess but this very small setting, buried deep within the explorer policy sorted it and saved a system restore, details as below:

Ensure that correct NoDriveTypeAutoRun and/or NoDriveAutoRun policy value is set
NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry key is used by Group Policy to configure whether to disable the Autoplay feature on all drives of the type specified. To check this setting, run Registry Editor (regedit), and navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
or (note that above registry value, if exists, will always supersede the below user-specific key),
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Locate the NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry entry on the right pane. The registry key is in DWORD hexadecimal value, which each bit determines which type of drive to disable or enable AutoPlay feature. There are many possible value for NoDriveTypeAutoRun, some possible wrong value that disable AutoPlay are:

0x000000B5 (181) disable AutoRun on CD-ROM drives, plus default unknown drive, removable drive (meant for floppy or ZIP), network drive and reserved drive type.
or
0x000000FF (255) disable AutoRun/AutoPlay on all drive types.

The best bet is to set NoDriveTypeAutoRun to default value of 0×00000091 (hexadecimal) or 145 (decimal)

Thank you for your help.