I usually just rip the movie off the DVD first and then keep the DVD sealed and in pristine scratch and smudge free condition. Personal use only, and I’m not sharing it via P2P. At least I can watch my movies in my laptop without having to pop in the DVD all the time.

Recently, I’ve been buggered by Windows Media Player immediately starting up whenever I pop in a DVD in my DVD drive. I honestly don’t use WMP for DVD or for viewing any video for that matter. It’s the first time I tried fixing my AutoPlay settings and it’s quite easy. Remember that issue I had with Yahoo! Messenger forcibly using IE? Pretty much the same with this. Here’s how make Vista not launch Media Player every time you insert a media disc (oh and customize other AutoPlay items too).

• Click Start -> Control Panel
• ouble click Autoplay
• In the list of options just select how Windows will behave when something’s inserted in a disk drive (or other connectivity slot)
• Click OK

And there you go. I set mine to Take No Action.