AutoRun (and AutoPlay) is one of the most annoying features found in Windows. It's annoying because for most of the time, automatical starting of installers or such is not what the user really wants.
I don't want the "defaults". If I want to run something from CD-ROM, I open the CD-ROM. If I want to start a game, I double-click on the icon. Or, if I absolutely need the autorun, I double-click the CD-ROM in "My Computer".
I developed a habit of pushing the left shift key when inserting CDs to the drive to skip AutoRun... everywhere... in other OSes... psychosis getting stronger and stronger and stronger every time... the annoying installers popping up in my dreams...
The AutoRun case was nowhere near finished...
...but I was too tired to go on.
I had to disable the feature.
Unluckily, Windows doesn't have an obvious way of disabling the autorun feature. The only way to do this is to go to the CD-ROM drive's properties (it's buried somewhere in the hidden corner of the control panel) and turn the drive's "insert notification" off. This also has the annoying habit of not letting Windows to know there is a CD in the drive; if I want to open the autorun window anyway, I need to refresh the My Computer view.
(Mike1024 told me that a new version of TweakUI from PowerToys lets to disable autorun without disabling insert notification...)
These days, I've got rid of that "shift key" habit. I'm a positive individual. I love these CD-ROMs again.
(Note: Terminology here may be different from real world, as I've only used the Finnish localized version of Win9x.)