hello all. This should be an easy one to answer. Thanks to all in advance.

I have prepared a small photo show to burn onto a CD and send to my family. Now, I would like the show to start automatically when the disk is inserted into the computer. I am using Nero 7 for the burning, but I have not yet found out how to program it so it will automatically start.

I guess I need something else, but I just do not know what. any help here?

You would need to creat an autorun.inf file.

Is it like a slideshow presentation, or have you savedit as a picture CD/DVD?

You must also ensure that the pc you will be running it on, actually has the software installed to read the file. i.e. if you created a PowerPoint presentation, you must ensure that PP reader is installed on the other PC. Also, you can save your presentation to autorun with powerpoint, without the need for an autorun file on the CD

Anyway, open note pad, type this in:

[autorun]
shellexecute=myfile.exe

save this as autorun.inf and place it on the cd's main folder.

Obviously substitute myfile.exe with the name of your presentation file.

You could use this:

http://www.softplatz.com/Soft/Utilities/Other/Autorun-Inf-Editor.html

or this

http://www.softplatz.com/Soft/Utilities/Other/Autorun-Inf-Editor.html

to make the autorun file, also within the "autorun.inf" file you can specify an icon for the cd aslong as the icon is in the cd using the following command:

icon=smiley.ico
(replacing smiley with the real icon name )

Also if its not an .exe file you are trying to open you could use:
open=explorer \index.htm (for a html page)
open=explorer \picture001.jpg (for directly opening a jpeg image)

hope this helps aswell.

Thanks guys for the info. Very helpful and it worked. Again, thanks,

Following the topic, another question.

I now know how to make it so the CD will automatically start a specific program. Now, I would like it to instead open a notepad readme file which, upon closing, would be followed by the slideshow.

Can this be done with a batch file maybe? do I need some further programming instead? Do I need simply to include some other instruction inthe autorun.inf file?

Thanks in advance to whomever wants to shed some light about this.

Batch files generally only run seperate programs without user input. There would be no way for a batch file to know you closed notepad, and powerpoint should open.

you could probably have notepad open, then a pre-determined time later, the presentation would open.

A much easier way would be to have the text in the first frame of the slide show.

Not the best solution, but you could make the very first picture the note you want to convey...tell the user to pause the slideshow if they want to read it for a longer period of time, or make it the first 3 or 4 pictures (showing the same thing) so they'll have longer to read it), or show a little bit more of the note in each subsequent picture.

You could use vbscript to execute them sequentially, the 2nd app launching upon the termination of the first. I wrote a script that did a set of remote tasks sequentially for one of my old jobs, if I find it I'll post it.

Hello all and thanks for the replies. AT the moment what I know how to do is to indeed use the text as the first pic in the slideshow. In any case, Max, should you publish here that vscript, I would certainly learn something new. I would thank you for that.

To all ,thanks. Great help. Much appreciated.

Hello all. One more question.

I wnat the autorun file to point to an exe file in a subdirectory. The autorun file in in the dir directory. Which of the following, if any, would do the trick?

shellexecute=\subdir

=\dir\subdir

=d:\dir\subdir

As always, many thanks in advance.

I believe the first option you wrote should work


shellexecute= /subdir/myfile