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AutoRunning Your CD Projects
by Ed Zivkovic - http://www.ezau.com

Five Easy Steps to Creating an Autorun CD

If you distribute products on CD, it always looks impressive if the CD will autorun when inserted into the drive. In this article we will cover one of the many ways to autorun HTML, exe and most other file types. (.pdf .mov .qtif .mpeg and others)

To create an autorun CD we will use a program which enables the CD to autostart from the CD ROM drive. There are many of these types of free programs available for download on the Internet. The one we will be working with here is called AutorunPro. AutorunPro is a Freeware program which you can use with your CD projects.

If you do not yet have a copy, you can go to the developers download page here: http://www.avdf.com/oct98/art_ot005.html. The AutorunPro download link is right at the bottom of the article under the sub-heading "Updated Utility".

AutorunPro has the capacity to autorun multiple files at once and can also autorun applications already installed on the users computer like the system clock or Internet Explorer with your website displayed. This magic freeware application was created by Mark Trescowthick with Ross Mack at GUI Computing: http://www.avdf.com/

Step One
Unzip AutorunPro.zip to a folder. Keep this folder which contains the files autorun.inf and AutorunPro.exe as your original. You might like to name this folder something like autorun tools.(optional)

Step Two
Copy autorun.inf and AutorunPro.exe into the folder which contains the file you want to autostart. This will be the root directory of the CD.

Step Three
Open autorun.inf with Notepad. Just double-click it and Notepad should open it. Edit the file so that it looks like the example below:

[Autorun]
open=AutoRunPro.exe /s

[AutorunPro]
Run1=yourfile.exe

Replace yourfile.exe with the actual name of your file and save it.

Step Four
Test to see if the project works correctly by double clicking on AutorunPro.exe. This will start yourfile.

Step 5
Now open your burning software and drag autorun.inf, AutorunPro.exe and yourfile into the root directory of the CD (your CD\your 3 files) and burn it onto a blank CD.

Congratulations! You have just created an autorun CD.

How To Autorun HTML

It is a good idea to name the HTML file you want auto started to index.html or index.htm. The procedure to autorun HTML files is the same procedure used to autorun exe files except step three is different. All you have to do is modify the .inf file as follows.

Edit or create an inf file with notepad and insert the following code:

[Autorun]
open=AutoRunPro.exe /s

[AutorunPro]
Run1=index.html

How to Add an Icon

If you want your CD to have it's own icon displayed as the CD drive, add an extra line of code so that the autorun inf file looks like the example below:

[Autorun]
open=AutoRunPro.exe /s
icon=youricon.ico

[AutorunPro]
Run1=index.html

Replace youricon.ico with the actual name of your icon. You can specify any path to the icon which is in your directory structure. For example, if your icon is in a folder called images and this folder is in the root directory, the code to use would be like the example below:

[Autorun]
open=AutoRunPro.exe /s
icon=images\youricon.ico

[AutorunPro]
Run1=index.html

Note: You do not need to add the icon= parameter when autorunning exe files because the application will already have an icon and it will be displayed.

Free Icon Editor:

If you would like to create your own icons, you can get a freeware icon editor called IconEdit32 here: http://www.onlythebestfreeware.com/program.asp?program_id=135.

Icon edit is pretty straight forward to use, but if you need some help, there is an online tutorial here: http://www.northcode.com/swfstudio/tutorials/iconedit/

Free Autorun CD Menu

If you distribute software and ebooks offline on a CD, you might like to add a HTML menu to your project. The menu is a HTML page that can be edited with Notepad or any old HTML editor: http://www.ezau.com/latest/articles/0119.shtml.

Free Slide Show Software

While we are talking about auto running stuff, why not play around with your digital photos and create a slide show CD with music. Burn your pictures to a CD along with AutorunPro, some MP3's and this cool freeware Slide show program called LPJ-Slide show 1.7.6. Your friends and family will be impressed! Find the download link here: http://hjem.get2net.dk/lpj/Download.htm.

The author, Ed Zivkovic is a self-taught webmaster. His website (http://www.ezau.com) contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Contact Ed here: http://www.ezau.com/zcontact.html