I have wireless broadband from Virgin Mobile Australia which came with a Huawei E169 USB modem. As Mac users of this modem will know, EVERY single time you plug the modem in a “CD disk” mounts on the desktop and if you are really unlucky the installer application starts running.

I have found a way to stop this happening by telling OS X (Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion) to not automount the “CD disk”.

I have written a package installer which will set the configuration so this disk wont mount in future. The package can be downloaded from http://www.blendedcocoa.com/downloads/VirginInstallerDiskRemover.pkg.

Download and run the package installer. Follow the instructions to install the configuration change. If you get an error it is probably because the modem can’t be found, make sure it is plugged in and that the installer disc is mounted on your desktop.

How It Works

Basically, the package contains a script that adds a configuration line to the /etc/fstab file, if the file doesn’t exist (which is probably the case) it is created. The following line is added to the file:

UUID=A97C9EAF-E18F-3BE3-80CD-8A8C6FB6E8E7 none hfs ro,noauto

The A97C...E8E7 text is the universal unique identifier (UUID) of the “CD disk” image. I am fairly certain that this UUID will not change between different VBB E169′s but the script should determine the correct UUID using diskutil anyway.

If /etc/fstab exists the script will make a backup (/etc/fstab.previrgin.date) and then add the above configuration to the end of /etc/fstab. If /etc/fstab already has an entry for the UUID the script will do nothing.

The script isn’t particularly complicated and should work in most cases. However, USE THE SCRIPT AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

P.S. If you aren’t using the latest drivers from Virgin (particularly if you are using Snow Leopard) go and get them from http://virginmobile.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/175/p/132/r_id/100671.

Update – 4th Jan 2012: Added Lion to the list of tested versions of OS X that the fix works with.