Having just formatted my PC last Sunday, I ran into a small snafu a few days later.
The Autoplay function quit working.

I would pop in a music CD game CD, or a movie DVD and nothing.
I went to MY Computer and right clicked on both of my CD ROMS and went to the props sheet for them, and they were setup correctly to auto launch the programs they used by default.

Googled it and found a page by Microsoft on how to edit the Registry, and did so about half way.
The 2nd part of the Reg edit a box to enter the code into confused me a bit, so I did not proceed not wanting to fubar my Registry.

I put back on TweakUI available from MS.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx

Before I was running an older version, and they now have a much better one for XP.
There is a setting in there for Autoplay, and for my CD drives it was unchecked.
Here is the fix.

Some program I installed or updated turned off the Autoplay feature.
The same thing happened to member Drew as we were discussing this the other day.
I know SP2 did not do it, so I am clueless as to how it got turned off.

By the way, after I checked the box to turn it on for my CD drives, I went back to Reg Edit and found that box with the text in it had the correct code now inserted into it.

So if your Autoplay has been acting up on you, this fix with TweakUI should cure it.