There is however another solution in the form of the USB security software USB Cop which has been uploaded to Sourceforge yesterday. USB Cop blocks all attempts to run an autorun.inf file on the computer system. It will instead display the contents of the file to the user giving a recommendation what the user should do with it.

Available options are to browse the contents of the disk or to close the dialog without performing an action. The interface itself will display all entries that are located in the autorun.inf file.

The option to execute the autorun.inf file is normally missing from the available options. What this application currently does is block all attempts of running an autorun.inf file on the computer system. The only difference between disabling that option in Windows and using the software is the ability to browse and see the contents of the autorun.inf file a bit faster and automatic with the software. In reality it would simply mean a few additional clicks for the same result without running a software in the background all the time.

The software itself uses about 4.5 Megabytes of computer memory while running.

Update: Development has continued in recent years, the latest version of the program, dubbed USB Cop 1.0 Alpha 1, has been uploaded to the Sourceforge servers in March 2011. It is definitely an alternative for inexperienced users who want recommendations what they should do when they insert a disc or stick with autorun information.

The USB Drive Letter Manager runs as a Windows service that solves the problem of drive letter assignments between usb devices, subst folders and network shares by automatically checking if the drive letter has been assigned to the latter before assigning a drive letter to a new USB device.

The software program can reserve letters so that they are not used by local drives, assign letters only from a list of default drive letters and specifically assign drive letters to USB devices by placing an ini file in the device’s root directory.

Another interesting feature of USB Drive Letter Manager is the ability to remove drive letters of card reader slots as long as no card is inserted. If you ever connected a multi-slot card reader to Windows you might have noticed that each slots receives its own drive letter by default which can be a lot depending on the number of different card slots on the reader.

By default USB Drive Letter Manager is only making sure that no network shares or subst folder letters get assigned to a newly connected USB device. Everything else is handled by the USBDLM.INI file. Additional parameters are described on the homepage of the software.

The suite contains three programs, first usb autorun which checks the connected usb devices, second the autorun.inf builder which makes it easy to create autostarts and last but not least the autoruns starter which is able to display information when files are autostarted from the usb device.

The big question is if this is useful to at least some users and I think it is. It is not only possible to start executables using this method but also playlists, documents, html pages and everything else you can think of.

I’ve written an article some weeks ago about using true crypt to encrypt part of your mobile device so that no one would get access to those files without the program true crypt and the key that you specified when creating the container.

A good application would be to autostart true crypt from the usb drive to be able to decrypt the container with the important files.