I have windows XP professional, whenever i put a cd in either of my dvd-rom or dvd-rw drives, it does not AUTOPLAY, and when i try to access the cd in the explorer, it displays the FILES on the cd, but when i try to run an exe file on the cd, i just get the HOURGLASS on the mouse and it does nothing. When there is a cd inm the drive and i click on my computer, it does not even display the icon showing that there is a cd in the drive, this is not an extremely old computer, it is actually relatively new, and i can play a dvd, but whenever i try to install new software it lags the whole computer until i take the cd out, everything goes back to normal, please help, (by the way, the dvd-rw drive is brand new, so it isnt that)To turn on AutoPlay on a XP Home Edition,

Open the Start menu, click 'Run', type 'regedit' and click OK.
In the Rewgistry EWditor, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTSET\SERVICES\CDROM
Select the Cdrom key, double-click the AutoRun value in the right pane. (If there is no AutoRun value, right-click a blank area in the right pane, select 'New', click 'DWORD Value'.)
Type '1' in the Value Data field, click OK, close the Registry Editor, and restart your PC.

To turn off AutoPlay, type '0' insted of '1'.

I have tested this on my computer.

[highlight]You might want to BACKUP your registry by clicking 'File' and then 'Export...'[/highlight]
I sugest typing the date as the file name.