And, something nerdy – how to create an autostart cd that plays on both a pc and mac.

i had to do this at work today…and it took me a while to figure it out, so i thought i’d share the info with you in case you ever need to do this.

i created a website press kit that will be copied onto a usb drive and dispersed to magazines and journalists. i wanted it to be easy and intuitive to open and check out.

creating an autostart/autorun cd for the pc is easy. all you have to do is add an autorun.inf file that tells the cd to open a certain file.

doing this on a mac is trickier. in fact, on osx you cannot autorun a file or program, but you can open a window that shows a main icon to click and view the file/start the program.

this involves creating a hybrid cd.

here’s what i did using a slightly older version of roxio (titanium 6)

1. create an inf file through a simple text editor and define the file you want to open.  add this to your project folder.

2. in roxio, create a mac/pc disc image by dumping the project contents into the main folder. double click each file or folder that you want invisible and select “invisible”. There should be only one file left that would be visible and that you’d want somone to click on to start the program. For instance, start.html. Save the Roxio project as a disc image.

3. mount the disc image by right-clicking and selecting to mount it through disc utility.

4. in roxio, clear out all the contents, and start a new cd by selecting “hybrid cd”. for the mac part, select the mounted disc image you just created. for the iso part, select all the project files, including the autorun.inf file.

5. burn the cd.

6. test the cd on mac and pc.  on the mac, a window should open with one icon. you click it and it opens the file or starts a program.  on the pc, the project will automatically start.

fyi…how to create an autostart cd for both a pc and mac…in case you ever need to…