How to create a USB autorun file
If you have produced the contents for your USB and you want to play them automatically when the flash drives are inserted into your customers computer then you should add the autorun file to the USB files. The autorun is a basic text file that tells the computer which .exe file to start.
There is two different kinds of autorun files that may be used:
Autorun using the 'open' command
The open command works with any PC running Windows 95 or newer (it is possible to manually disable the autorun feature on any computer system, if a customer can not view your autorun application then this is probably why). However it can only be used for opening executable files ending in .exe such as Flash presentations, it cannot be used for opening documents such as Word files, PDFs or web pages. To open documents other than .exe files using the autorun system please look at the "shellexecute command" explanation below
The icon for the autorun file looks as per this image and the text file is always called autorun.inf
In the above window the "flashfile.exe" part should be changed to the filename that you wish opened by the computer.
Autorun using the 'shellexecute' command
The shellexecute command has more options than the "open command" and will allow you to open practically any file on a PC in its own application, so can be used for PDFs (Portable Document Format), .DOC (Word files), .HTML (web pages) and .MPG/.AVI/.WMP etc (movies) where the open command will not work. Microsoft only bought this function in by in Windows 2k and so only work in Windows 2k / Windows Me / Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 and later.
The icon for the autorun file looks like the one below and the text file is called autorun.inf
In the above image the index.html part should be changed to the filename that you want to open, such as the name of the PDF (Portable document format) or the URL of the website that you would like to open up first. For example the file to open was called index.html and it was in the folder called website then the second line of the autorun file should be "shellexecute=website/index.html"
Other Notes about Autorun files:
For .PPS files (PowerPoint Presentations) you don't need to make an autorun file! You should use the autorun feature built in to the powerpoint software The autorun.inf file should always be in the uppermost level of the USB and not placed inside a folder.
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