Autorun / Autoplay an HTML file When a CD in Inserted

Contributed by davak March 18, 2004  
Tagged: Windows

Thousands of shareware programs exist for autoplaying a HTML when a CD is entered. This highlights the freeware that does the same.

Having your CD autorun is easy. Just create a file called autorun.inf and place it on your CD. Using notepad you can create this file containing the following information:
[autorun]
open=Program.Exe

This example will autorun Program.Exe if it exists on your CD-ROM.

This method, however, will only execute *.exe files. Therefore, running an html file is more complicated and this does not work:
[autorun]
open=webfile.html

Previously, copying start.exe to the CD-ROM and using it to launch the html file worked well. However, this no longer works in later versions of windows such as 2000 and XP. In order to cash in on this problem, multiple software designers have created programs that replicate the action of start.exe.

Avvia does this little process for free. Download and place avvia.exe on your CD-ROM and create your autorun.inf file in the following format:
[autorun]
open=avvia.exe webfile.html

Avvia rocks. Go freeware!

Other nag or ad-filled similar programs such as shellrun exist as well.