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Autorun CD - How To Autorun HTML

Man and woman listening to CDs in their living room.
Man and woman listening to CDs in their living room.

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 files such as index.html.

To create an autorun CD we will use a program which enables the CD to autoplay from the CD ROM drive.

There are several free autorun 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.

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.

The only drawback with AutorunPro (and other free Autorun programs) is that it will not create an autorun menu for your project and it is not a quick job when compared to using a professional autorun menu creation program.

AutorunPro was created by Mark Trescowthick with Ross Mack at GUI Computing: http://www.avdf.com/. The AutorunPro download page: http://www.avdf.com/oct98/art_ot005.html

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 Five

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 autostarted 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 in the My Computer window 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.

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