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How to Autostart a CD with an HTML-document

How to Autostart a CD
with an HTML-document

When you are looking for the way to create an autostart-CD which starts an HTML-document with the defaultbrowser in Windows 95/98/NT you found the place. You will get:

Here you can go directly to the points you are interested in:

  1. The principle to autostart a CD with autorun.inf
  2. Why you cannot autostart an HTML-document on your CD
  3. Why you CAN autostart an HTML-document on your CD and what the trick is
  4. How to make your system to accept autostart-floppydisks and how to create it with sample files provided here.
  5. A more tricky autostart-floppydisk


1. The principle to autostart a CD with autorun.inf

Simply set a file named autorun.inf into the rootdirectory of your CD. The content is like this:

[autorun]
; you can only autostart an exe-file
; the exefile must be on the CD, 
; not possible is: "open=notepad readme.txt"
open = setup.exe
; the icon of the CD shown in the explorer
icon = opener.ico

 

2. Why you cannot autostart an HTML-document on your CD

There are some limitations in the autorun.inf:

 

3. Why you CAN autostart an HTML-document on your CD and what the trick is

You can start a document if you can write an exefile which knows how to start the defaultprogram for the given document. This program is called autobrowse.exe, you can download it here.

The syntax for it is: autobrowse.exe mydocument.html

 

4. How to make your system to accept autostart-floppydisks and how to create it with sample files provided here

If you want to create an autostartCD you could wish that you could try it out before trasing a CD with it. Although you can overwrite files on a CD with a 2nd session it's tricky to have an autostart floppy. Here is how you can do this:

 

1. Start the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Go to Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Change the value NoDriveTypeAutoRun
 former value value with floppy-autorun
CD-Autorun enabled  95  91
CD-Autorun disabled  B5  B1


Now your floppy disks are autorun-enabled.
But: the autoruninformation is only read from floppy disk if you log in to your computer (again).

3. Take this samplefiles for an autostart-floppydisk and copy them to your floppy-disk. Think that all the files (autorun.inf...) have to be in the rootdirectory of the floppydisk.

4. To test log out and in, open "My Computer". You should see your disk with an own icon like shown on the picture.

Now double-click on the A: icon. Your WWW-browser opens and will display the index.html of the disk.

 

 

5. A more tricky autostart-floppydisk

You can provide context-menus on the disk if you create you autorun.inf like this:

 [autorun]
; this is for opening the given document
; with the default program on this computer
; you could also use *.pdf, *.doc or whatever
open = autobrowse.exe index.html
; the icon of the CD shown in the explorer
icon = opener.ico
; when right-clicking on the CD there will be a
; contextmenu:
;
shell\readme\command=notepad readme.txt
shell\readme=Read with Notepad
;
shell\software\command=autobrowse.exe index.html
shell\software=&Start CD
 

I don't know exactly what you can do with this in practise but you will know if you need it.



Last modified:
14.09.2003 11:54
Impressum
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Das haben wir jetzt 40 Jahre so gemacht, warum sollten wir das ändern?
Why inventing jokes? Real life does a better job:
We are doing it this way for 40 years, why should we change it?