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At least Windows XP SP2 replaced AutoRun with AutoPlay. Devices (other than music CDs) no longer auto-run, instead asking you what you want to do with it, albeit with the AutoRun-specified item at the top of the list.

This was changed further in Windows Vista/7, so that USB/FireWire drives don't even acknowledge that they have an AutoRun option. Which caused U3 to blatantly abuse this by pretending its U3 partition is a CD-ROM.

Your description suggests that you have been bitten by "U3". It is, indeed, a thoroughly vile technology, of which Sandisk(among others) is inordinately fond. It essentially does nothing that http://portableapps.com/ can't; but with infinitely more suck.

After sufficient user outcry they, at long last, provided a (proprietary, Windows only) uninstaller for this "valuable feature". I'd still encourage you to punish Sandisk for their sins by withholding future purchases; but the uninstaller should at least make the stuff you already own suck a little less.

Yes it is annoying.

Here is the uninstall program
http://u3.com/support/default.aspx#CQ3

The idea is cool but useless.

http://u3.com/support/default.aspx#CQ3

They finally came out with an uninstaller for it. Quick and easy, but back up all your data as it wipes the entire flash drive.

I watch a lot of fansubbed anime & find I prefer Zoomplayer http://inmatrix.com/

I also am using a 6 year old IBM laptop that isn't too powerful & I find Zoom uses less memory & less processing power. Therefore less lag & better rendering.

I believe this is due to the fact that the actual Zoom player is a sort of framework and all the codecs are external.

It used to be a beast to set-up the codecs but now it has an excellent codec installer which downloads the latest needed codecs (you have control over which) and installs them, usually perfectly.

The only thing I found recently was that I couldn't get it to play Flash .flv although I had Flash installed. Turned out I had Flash installed on Firefox & Zoomplayer needed the IE OCX control - once I fired up IE and installed Flash it worked fine.

Zoom is well-tuned for speed & accuracy and handles subtitles beautifully with complete positioning & display options including font selection.

There is even an U3 version that runs from a USB stick http://software.u3.com/Product_Details.aspx?ProductId=114

It is of course a paid Windows application so I guess everyone here is going to put it down.

Autorun also works if the flash drive pretends it's something else, like a USB CD drive. Then Windows will allow autorun. There are entire lines of USB drives that have this (mis)feature.

Sick of this nonsense, meaning your 2GB memory is actually only 1.8GB plus some non removable crap, and not one but 2 drive letters to deal with :-(

If you're of the crap I think you're thinking of it is removable -

http://www.u3.com/uninstall/

Yeah, but will it run on Vista?

ducks

In the Windows world, how about stuff made for U3 memory sticks?

I'd say that PuTTY is also pretty utilitarian - does what it needs without any fancy installs or bloating - BRILLIANT!

It is not the case for all of them, my Kingston drive kept the U3 stuff in the firmware and I had to download http://www.u3.com/uninstall/ to get rid of it.

I had to blitz a memory stick for my father-in-law. As I recall, this program hung while reformatting the stick. Scary, but it did work.

U3 has a removal program available on their website. Available here: http://www.u3.com/uninstall/

from what I remember the security team hacked teh drives to achieve what the wanted.

However I recently purchased a USB drive that comes with U3 capability

To me this is just plain evil. By default when you plug it in it runs code on the drive from a separate partition.

This sounds very similar to http://www.u3.com/ U3 software, which also provides a bunch of applications one can carry on a USB flash-drive. This includes free and not-so-free software (all for windows tho'). Inserting the USB drive into a windows machine brings up a little "Start" menu in the taskbar, with options to interact with the software on the drive (launch program, install new software, etc.).

They don't appear to have a very extensive collection of software (yet). But most of the essentials are there (OOo, Firefox, etc.)

If you go to U3 there's an uninstaller available.

U3 is a platform and Migo is a standaolne application. I have a U3 Drive and I also tried Migo with it and some other applications. I needed an application to sync my Outlook between different PCs since I don't have an exchange server and the only application that allowed me to do that on a U3 Drive was Carry it Easy +Plus http://software.u3.com/Product_Details.aspx?Produc tId=179&Selection=1&Lang=en-US&Position=ENHPFS2F The software also has 128 bit AES encryption and makes your data sufficiently safe. I can not say how the U3 encryption is since my U3 drive doesn't offer this.

You know there is always a better or faster or cheaper way. With this program it is the same as with a car. There is no 100% protection, but it help's a lot to lock it.

</sarcasm>

Actually, the WebSafe "Website Encryption" is much better for keeping away "prying ices" than U3. At least WebSafe actually does some kind of encryption, even if the decryption algorithm and the keys are right there in the source code for everyone to see. U3, on the other hand, at least appears to claim encryption where there is none. I'll direct you to their website, where they claim:

The U3 platform is designed to leave no trace of the user's data or application usage on the host computer after the smart drive is removed. The U3 platform also supports the creation of security solutions to protect the privacy and security of user data and applications. These solutions include encrypted files and folders, and sign-on and password protection and management.

Oh, I get it. They "support the creation" of encryption, when actually, if you look at their smart drive page, the word "encryption" is nowhere to be found. Instead, it's all about "Password Management" -- so they keep themselves clean, but it's obviously confusing enough to fool customers, especially when others claim "Secure data encryption" on what they call a "U3 Smart Drive", although I can't figure out whether Verbatim is wrong/lying or whether they've simply taken the existing U3 software and actually added encryption.

Or maybe there's some other loophole. But even if I wasn't planning on using the encryption, I wouldn't do business with these jokers. (U3, not necessarily Verbatim.) It's clearly designed to fool people into thinking they're getting something they're not, which really makes them no better than the WebSafe moron -- and perhaps significantly worse, as the WebSafe guy may actually still believe his product is worth something.

You know there is always a better or faster or cheaper way. With this program it is the same as with a car. There is no 100% protection, but it help's a lot to lock it.

</sarcasm>

Actually, the WebSafe "Website Encryption" is much better for keeping away "prying ices" than U3. At least WebSafe actually does some kind of encryption, even if the decryption algorithm and the keys are right there in the source code for everyone to see. U3, on the other hand, at least appears to claim encryption where there is none. I'll direct you to their website, where they claim:

The U3 platform is designed to leave no trace of the user's data or application usage on the host computer after the smart drive is removed. The U3 platform also supports the creation of security solutions to protect the privacy and security of user data and applications. These solutions include encrypted files and folders, and sign-on and password protection and management.

Oh, I get it. They "support the creation" of encryption, when actually, if you look at their smart drive page, the word "encryption" is nowhere to be found. Instead, it's all about "Password Management" -- so they keep themselves clean, but it's obviously confusing enough to fool customers, especially when others claim "Secure data encryption" on what they call a "U3 Smart Drive", although I can't figure out whether Verbatim is wrong/lying or whether they've simply taken the existing U3 software and actually added encryption.

Or maybe there's some other loophole. But even if I wasn't planning on using the encryption, I wouldn't do business with these jokers. (U3, not necessarily Verbatim.) It's clearly designed to fool people into thinking they're getting something they're not, which really makes them no better than the WebSafe moron -- and perhaps significantly worse, as the WebSafe guy may actually still believe his product is worth something.

Pro - Portable Apps, including firefox and thunderbird so your cookies aren't left behind when you do online banking at a public computer.
Con - Only works on WinXP

To uninstall, check out FAQ #6 @ http://www.u3.com/support/default.aspx

One thing this is annoying about that--they recognize that Mac and Linux users might want to get rid of U3 (their survey that asks why you are getting rid of it includes using Mac or Linux among the answers), but the software to remove U3 only runs on Windows.

It did not work under Parallels on my Mac. I had to really boot Windows to run the U3 remover.

Link Fixed the link for you

http://www.u3.com/uninstall/

There is a way to uninstall it. http://www.u3.com/uninstall/

Create a cd partition on the USB drive and put your autorun.ini there. THat's what my U3 Drive does....

the hard part is keeping the key safe but easy to use. I don't want to have to type in a password every time I boot up, but I obviously don't want the key anywhere on the hard drive.

What I really want is the encryption keys to live on a USB device that I boot from, something just small enough to bootstrap the system and start decoding from the hard drive. Ideally, it'd be some sort of smart card, like the U3 jump drives. I'd like to put all of the private keys for my system on the jump drive, and have sshd get the session key from the smart U3 device, so my ssh private host key never leaves the USB device. It's applying the principle of least privilege to my PC - I'd just as soon never trust Windows with my private keys.

When I'm done with the computer in a few years, I just pull out the USB key and I know that the data on the drive is completely useless to anyone else.

U3 is an initiative of flash card vendors to make applications available on any (windows) computer with a USB socket, without installing, changing the registry or leaving data behind on the host's harddrive.

Of course, security is always an issue - not everyone would (or should) trust a random PC not to sniff all the data on the inserted disk-on-key.

The article makes reference to this new "U3 technology" that enables a flash drive to run programs. Exactly what is the point of this? Does anybody know. As far as I know, any program should be able to run off any flash drive as long as it doesn't do something like store all its settings on the host computer's registry or something. Isn't that how stuff like Portable Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. work? So why exactly is this concept so hard to do that one needs a special software SDK and specially designed hardware?

You should take a look at U3. It's a platform that stores and runs software, and looking at their software listings, under Security they seem to have some encryption packages available. It also runs Skype, so I can carry it around and use it on stupid internet cafe's that don't have it installed.

You should take a look at U3. It's a platform that stores and runs software, and looking at their software listings, under Security they seem to have some encryption packages available. It also runs Skype, so I can carry it around and use it on stupid internet cafe's that don't have it installed.