I don't want to sound negative, but these are my thoughts regarding this subject.
First of all, an autorun is just an autorun. It is true that you can password protect the autorun, but is still just the autorun, which can be easily bypassed by right-clicking the drive, and choosing "open", or by using Windows Explorer. If you do that, the cd is not password protected anymore because the password is just stored in the autorun program.
Second, bypassing the password is easy, but there is always a solution to give your disc additional protection. It is hiding the contens using UltraISO or similar program. Yes, this is usefull, but still not 100% safe. For people who know how to deal with hidden contents of ISO, they can view your files in seconds. Another thing is, hiding contents has a serious drawback. If you hide ALL the contents of the cd, even you will have a hard time browsing the contents of your CD. So for me, it is not advisable to hide everything in the CD. Because it is like locking your door, so you no one can enter, including you! And you have to pick the lock everytime you want to enter.
And last but not the least, this protection applies only in Windows, not in DOS mode, and not during the installation of Windows! Do you need an autorun to install Windows? No. So what's the point of having a password protected autorun? What I want to see is a tool that lets me password protect the installation in DOS mode. Without the proper password, no one can enter the setup. But I'm not sure if there is such a tool. Hiding the contents of the CD is good. I use it all the time, but I don't hide ALL of the contents. I only hide winnt.sif, passwords, etc.
This just my personal opinion. So I don't mean to discourage anyone, and I don't intend to mess up this topic.
That's all for now, and I'm out.