Zubaga’s blog

Copyright © 2006 Ed Zivkovic

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 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 and ensure that the icon is in the root directory.

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.

Iconedit 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 Slideshow Software

While we are talking about autorunning stuff, why not play around with your digital photos and create a slideshow CD with music. Burn your pictures to a CD along with AutorunPro, some MP3’s and this cool freeware Slideshow program called LPJ-Slideshow 1.7.6. Your friends and family will be impressed! Find the download link here: http://hjem.get2net.dk/lpj/Download.htm.
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The author, Ed Zivkovic is based on the Gold Coast in Australia.
Contact details are available at his web site along with many helpful webmaster articles: http://www.ezau.com

By Khemal Dole

Information product marketing is one of the easiest businesses to start because of the fact that there are very little overheads, it can be done from your computer at home, it can be practically instant and a number of other factors but the one thing that stops most people from starting their own information product business is simply because they don’t know how to create one.

Creating an info product is not the hardest thing in the world and can be done quite fast with a little determination and hard work. This article will tell you the five step system for creating your first ever info product.

1) Find a market. Many people come up with an idea, create the product and then try to find a market for it and that is exactly why they fail becasue they don’t know if there is a market for their product or not. You can find a market in many ways such as through blogs, articles, magazines, newspapers, forums and so on. Find a problem that you think you can solve and go with it.

2) Ask your market what they want. This can be done easily through forums and surveys, all you really need to do is ask your market what sort of things they would like to know more about, what problems they would like to be solved, what they would like to have for their benefit and so on. A simple survey will do this for you, find somewhere that you can conduct a survey such as a forum or an email list and conduct one to find out exactly what your market wants.

3) Plan your product. Plan every aspect of your product and make it as easy for yourself as possible, if you have a plan then you will find it much easier to write. You should plan out things such as the title and subtitle, the introduction, the chapter titles, the chapter contents, the conclusion and any other part of the product that you can. Creating an easy to follow plan will help you create your product much faster.

4) Write your product. This is easy to do as you have a plan and you can just go through it one part at a time. Write at your own pace, do not rush yourself as you want to create a high quality product, go through each part of your product and write it one part at a time, you could even have a break between each chapter. The main points are that you are finding it as easy as possible and you are creating a quality product.

5) Sprucing it up. This is just making it look better and making it more appealing to your prospects. You should have someone read over your info product and ask them for their honest feedback, this way you can get a third party opinion and use it to improve your product. You can just ask a family member or a friend but make sure they are completely honest with you. You could also get some nice graphics and images made up for your product to make it look nicer.

That’s it, those are the simple five steps you can use to create your first ever info product. Creating a quality product does not need to be a hard and frustrating task, all you need is a plan, some determination and some writing skill.

Get started today and create your very own information product.

Khemal Dole owns and operates http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREE service which helps many first-timers and even experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit http://www.paychecksdirect.com right now and see for yourself why so many are flocking to his site.