Win 98 help, please

[Beth Haney]

Thanks to the work of Peter Duniho and good 'ol Joe, I've created one CD that will automatically launch a Web Gallery in either my Mac and my XP Pro computer. However, it won't start automatically in my Win 98 machine. I was looking through some info on creating these, and I see where there may be a setting in the Win 98 OS that controls whether or not a CD will begin to play automatically when it's inserted in the drive. I've done a couple of Finds and poked through Win 98's panels, but I can't find anything. Can anybody give me instructions on how to check? At this point, I'm not sure if it's my CD that still needs tweaking or the computer!

[Peter Duniho]

"Beth Haney" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:2ccd5d12.-1@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> [...] I was looking through some info on creating these, and
> I see where there may be a setting in the Win 98 OS that
> controls whether or not a CD will begin to play automatically
> when it's inserted in the drive.

Do other CD's "autorun" on the same computer? If they do, this probably
isn't the problem. If they don't, then it probably is. :)

The setting you're looking for is a little buried. It's in the CD drive's
properties. There are a few different ways to get there, but here's my
preferred method:

1) Right-click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, and choose
"Properties" from the pop-up menu
2) The dialog that comes up will have a "Devices" tab (or maybe it's called
"Device Manager"...I forget). Select that tab, which will display a list of
all the hardware on your computer (you probably didn't realize you had so
much stuff in one little box :) ).
3) Find the entry for the CD-ROM drive. There should be a category labeled
as such, and underneath (that is, by clicking on the "+" to expand the
category) you'll find the actual drive.
4) Once you've found the entry in the list for the actual drive,
double-click that.
5) The dialog that comes up this time will have a "Settings" tab. Select
that tab, and you should find in there a checkbox labelled "Auto-insert
notification". Make sure that's turned on.

Hope that helps.

Pete

[Beth Haney]

Thanks, Pete. I'd only missed finding it by one double click! The news isn't good. Auto-insert is enabled, so that means the problem is with the CD. Interesting that it will work on one OS and not the other. Do you have any ideas? I used an AUTORUN.INF doc that Joe had created and e-mailed to me, and I used your shex.exe doc. When Joe burned the CD and tested it, he was able to get it to run on Win 98. (My AUTORUN.INF wasn't any good because I didn't have a "neutral" text editor installed on this drive.)

And, I'd already figured the setting was probably OK, because install CDs always open automatically on that computer. I was just hoping... But, no, things just aren't going to be that simple for me today I guess.

If you have any brilliant ideas I'd like to hear them. Digesting them is another issue; my brain is getting mushier with each coaster. :)

[Peter Duniho]

"Beth Haney" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote in message
news:2ccd5d12.1@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> Thanks, Pete. I'd only missed finding it by one double click!
> The news isn't good. Auto-insert is enabled, so that means
> the problem is with the CD. Interesting that it will work on
> one OS and not the other. Do you have any ideas?

Well, if the same burned CD does actually work in another PC, I would say
the problem probably still lies in the Win98 computer you're testing it
with.

Unfortunately, beyond that I don't have any ideas that come to mind. I have
had trouble with the auto-insert setting in the past on Win9x versions, in
that sometimes when it's set, CD's don't autorun, and (believe it or not!)
sometimes when it's NOT set, CD's *do* autorun. Grrr... However, when I
was having that trouble, it happened uniformly. I didn't get different
behavior with different CD's.

I did test shex.exe on a fresh install of Win98 and it worked fine. So
there's no reason that it simply wouldn't work on Win98. But I can't rule
out individual differences between computers that would still cause it to
fail to work on particular computers, even while it works on others.

One thing you might try is copying the shex.exe program to the computer and
try testing it standalone. Just open a command prompt window and type "shex
<document name>" where shex.exe is somewhere in your path (you can either
copy it to the Windows system directory, normally found at
"C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM" or you can just make sure your current directory is
where you've copied the program to) and <document name> is the filename of a
document you want to open (again, either in your current directory, or you
need to provide the full path to the file).

Other things to test:

* Try burning a CD without shex.exe. Just use "open=index.htm" for your
autorun.inf file. This won't do the right thing, but it will do *something*
(i.e. open the root folder for the CD) and reassure you that you've got the
basic autorun.inf stuff working on that computer for CD's you burn.

* Try opening the index.htm file directly from the CD manually just by
double-clicking it. This will reassure you that the HTML file does work as
expected on that computer.

The basic idea with the three tests above is to simplify the process, so you
can narrow down what's actually going wrong. Using the auto-insert to start
up your browser with the index HTML file involves a chain of events that all
have to happen properly. By breaking it down into the individual
components, hopefully you can learn what part of that chain is not working
right.

By the way, this sort of thing is why I really like my CD-RW drive. No
coasters. :)

Pete

[Juergen D]

Beth,

Look in Control Panel>System>Device Manager>CD-Rom>Your
CD-drive>Properties>Settings.
See if Auto insert notification is checked. If not, check it and see if
that helps.

Juergen

[Juergen D]

Sorry, I didn't see the other responses on the newsreader. I guess I'm a
little late.

Juergen

[Beth Haney]

Oh, this is going to require lunch first!

I've already eliminated one of your troubleshooting suggestions. When I open the CD, all the files and folders are there, and the gallery runs properly when I double click on the index.htm. But that was the easy one.

Suggestion number three will go alright, too. I can burn another coaster as well as the next guy!

Your first suggestion - and the one that will probably be the most enlightening - is going to get postponed until after I find a different computer to test this on. I'll go to great lengths to avoid opening a command prompt window. There's a reason my main computer is a Mac, you know. :)

Thanks, Pete. I still have a feeling it's the computer, but there's no reason why this CD would have to work on it besides curiosity. I was using it as a guinea pig, but if it's going to be cranky it'll lose it's big chance to be useful.

But maybe after food I'll reconsider and tackle the command prompt window. Just because I'm a masochist.

[Beth Haney]

I've narrowed down the problem - without having to do a command prompt window yet! I downloaded a demo software and burned a CD. It opens automatically in Mac, Win 98, and XP Pro. So I'm definitely looking for something in one or the other of those docs used for the autorun feature; the computer is OK. Back to the drawing board.

[Don Girard]

Beth,

Here's a free program that I use to make auto-run CD's.

[url]http://tinyurl.com/msny[/url]

Don