external drive is driving me crazy (autoplay)

[Anti]

Everytime lightroom starts it sets itself up in Vista to autoplay for 'pictures' and 'mixed content'. So it launches every time I plug in my external drive (a few times a day).

I keep unchecking edit -> prefs -> import -> show import dialog but it just re-checks by itself every time lightroom starts!

I thought this preference was perhaps saved with the original catalog settings, but I can't see how to save the catalog with new settings?

Auto-import is off.
Further, it is not Vista, because other software like media monkey, behaves properly.

Any suggestions?

 

[RikkFlohr]

This is a known problem that was introduced in the 2.4 update. Adobe is aware of the issue but short of the status of a yet unguessed version 2.5 or 2.41, there isn't an easy fix that will stick every time. I get around it by telling my Lightroom to back my catalog daily and then when the dialog launches, I hit the cancel button. Of course, if I need to launch LR, then I have to wait for a catalog backup. I usually have LR open all day so for me it is a smaller issue but an annoying one.

It never hurts to fill out a bug report, located at the top of the menu bar of this forum.

 

[Anti]

OK, here's what I did to fix:

· Close Lightroom
· In Control Panel -> autoplay, change the settings to 'ask each time' or whatever.

· Use regedit and search 'keys' and 'values' for: Lightroom2BetaAutoPlayHandler
- When finds a key (ie. a folder icon), export the key and delete.
- When it comes across a value (ie. an icon with 'ab' written on it), delete.

I found four keys to delete in four locations:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoplayHandlers\Handlers

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\AutoplayHandlers\Handlers

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoplayHandlers\Handlers

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-336659'995-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoplayHandlers\Handlers

This in itself is weird, because in my experience usually when a key is deleted in one location, the 'mirrors' are deleted automatically. However, I think it took all four of them to be deleted manually to fix the issue. Not sure - I wasn't paying close attention.

Note that in the 'Lightroom 2 Preferences.agprefs' file, the setting:
memoryCardDetectionAction will still be set to "ImportBehavior_ShowImportDialog" each time LR starts. However, because the registry was butchered it won't be able to show the dialog.

If you try this fix, remember to keep your reg exports in a safe place, just in case.
And backup your registry before editing.

Although this seems to work just now, I have read that sometimes it keeps returning intermittently. I'll post back if that ever happens.

Cheers.