Many of us these days burn our own CDs for various reasons, and sometimes you may want that CD to begin a program automatically when you insert the CD – just like the CDs you would buy at the store. This is very easy to do. The Autorun feature of Windows is based on a file on the CD called autorun.inf. Windows simply searches for that file which tells it which program on the CD to run automatically, and Windows (usually) dutifully complies. So, to make your own CDs autorun, you simply need to creare your own autorun.inf file. To do so, open your favorite text editor (Notepad will do) and enter two lines:

[autorun]
open=filename.exe

where filename.exe is replaced by the name of the program on your CD which you want to run automatically. Save this file as autorun.inf and place it on your CD when you burn it.

There are more complex options available to to from autorun files, and you can even use third-party autorun creation programs to allow you to create more complex ones with little hassle. Moon Valley Software puts one out and so does KarenWare.

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