Windows versions prior to Windows XP On any drive type, the autorun.inf is read, parsed and instructions followed immediately and silently. The "AutoRun task" is the application specified by the open or shellexecute keys. If an AutoRun task is specified it is executed immediately without user interaction. Windows XP, prior to Service Pack 2 Introduction of AutoPlay. Drives of type DRIVE_CDROM invoke AutoPlay if no autorun.inf file is found. Drives of type DRIVE_REMOVABLE do not use the autorun.inf file. Any discovered removable media are handled by AutoPlay. All other handling is as before. XP Service Pack 2 and up (includes Vista) Drives of type DRIVE_FIXED are now handled by AutoPlay. Any specified AutoRun task appears as an option within the AutoPlay dialog together with any text specified by the optional action key. Drives of type DRIVE_REMOVABLE now use autorun.inf but continue to be handled by AutoPlay. Any specified AutoRun task needs to be paired with the mandatory action key to appear as an option within the AutoPlay dialog. Otherwise the AutoRun task is omitted. All other handling is as before. Vista and later The AutoRun task is no longer automatically and silently executed on any drive type. All volumes are handled by AutoPlay which, by default, will present an appropriate dialog to the user. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 For all drive types, except DRIVE_CDROM, the only keys available in the [autorun] section are label and icon. Any other keys in this section will be ignored. Thus only CD and DVD media types can specify an AutoRun task or affect double-click and right-click behaviour. There is a patch available, KB971029 for Windows XP and later, that will change AutoRun functionality to this behaviour. A simple example This simple autorun.inf file specifies setup.exe as the application to run when AutoRun is activated. The first icon stored within setup.exe itself will represent the drive in Explorer: [autorun] open=setup.exe icon=setup.exe,0 label=My install CD Sections Following are the sections and keys allowed in a valid autorun.inf. There also exist architecture specific section types for systems such as Windows NT 4 running on RISC. However these are long outdated and not described here. The autorun section contains the default AutoRun commands. An autorun.inf file must contain this section to be valid. Keys allowed are: action=text action=@[filepath\]filename,-resourceID Windows XP SP2 or later; drives of type DRIVE_REMOVABLE and DRIVE_FIXED Specifies text used in the