As described above in this article, an AutoPlay dialog box is shown when the user plugs a USB stick in a USB port. This AutoPlay dialog box contains a list of action (options) that can be performed on the USB flash drive, for example view a slideshow of pictures on the drive (if there exist any) or open Windows Explorer. In Windows XP and Windows Vista it is possible to extend this AutoPlay dialog box with your own action item (option). This will give the USB flash drive almost AutoRun capability. The item is placed as the first item in the action list, and it is also selected by default, so the user only needs to press Enter or OK to launch the program. Not as automatic as using pure AutoRun, but almost.
To add this action item to the AutoPlay dialog in Windows, a command called ACTION must be placed in theAutorun.inf file. This command will display a user-defined text row in the AutoPlay dialog box (as the first text row) and it will co-operate with the OPEN command in the Autorun.inf file. The OPEN command specifies the filename of the program to execute. We will explain the ACTION command with more details below in this article, but first some words about Windows 7.
