Any Way to Autorun from a Flash Drive?

We have a CD we've created for our client with a sales/marketing program on it. The program doesn't need to be installed, it just autoruns from the the CD. The only problem is that many of the sales people now have laptops with no disk drive. They are asking for us to create a flash drive they can insert and have the program autorun exactly as with the CD.

Is this possible in Windows 7 and newer? Is there any way to achieve this? They don't even need the flash drives to be able to store any other files, they just want to run this program from them.

Thanks.

Google-> autorun from flash drive

and see all the articles;)

Note that the reason that modern versions of Windows have thumb drive autorun disabled by default is that there are certain viruses that target thumb drives' autorun feature...

https://blog.comodo.com/malware-2/ma...autorun-virus/

So even if you create an autorun thumb drive most Windows users won't get it to run automatically when they use it unless they reset autorun defaults on their own computer.

In fact there are some handy little utilities that stop thumb drives from ever being autorun enabled..

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...B-flash-drives

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Originally Posted by Steve R Jones

Google-> autorun from flash drive

and see all the articles;)

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Wow Steve...search Google. What an amazing suggestion! I don't know why I hadn't thought of that. Oh wait, I spent most of yesterday doing that, which is why I came here to where the "experts" might have some other suggestions.

Why even bother posting something if it's nothing more than "go search Google"? Are you just trolling me?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fink

Note that the reason that modern versions of Windows have thumb drive autorun disabled by default is that there are certain viruses that target thumb drives' autorun feature...

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Yes, I understand that, and that's what I told the owner of the company but it would be great if we could come up with another solution for the client.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fink

So even if you create an autorun thumb drive most Windows users won't get it to run automatically when they use it unless they reset autorun defaults on their own computer.

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I just want it to behave the same way a CD/DVD would. I realize that autorun is normally disabled by default in Windows 7 and later, but it still pops up and asks you what you'd like to do when a disc is inserted, and run the autorun program is the first option.

Lot of work
http://www.visualdesigning.com/artic...run-usb-drive/

My search has other links
https://www.google.com/search?q=auto...utf-8&oe=utf-8

If you state that you had search and hit a blank wall, it sure would help out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Train

Lot of work
http://www.visualdesigning.com/artic...run-usb-drive/

My search has other links
https://www.google.com/search?q=auto...utf-8&oe=utf-8

If you state that you had search and hit a blank wall, it sure would help out.

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Thank you, Train, I will definitely look into this. You're right, I guess I should have stated that I had already researched and hit a brick wall, but I figured that was implied by coming here. Maybe some users come here without trying to solve a problem themselves, but this is always my last hope after having exhausted my own research.

Are most members of Virtual Dr. not expected to have already done at least basic research on a problem themselves? I may have reacted a little harshly, but you'd think I'd get a little more feedback than simply, "search Google". I may not have over 20,000 posts, but I'm also not new to the site by any means.

Anyway, I did continue researching on my own and found this site which may also give me what I'm looking for: http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/9...-a-flash-drive

Windows 7 has AutoRun turned off by default for security reasons. There are ways to re-enable it, but if these are company laptops, the company IT department isn't likely to want to allow AutoRun to be enabled, since it makes the laptops much more vulnerable to malicious code.

http://superuser.com/questions/53815...s-on-windows-7

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...open-a-webpage

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...hrough-autorun

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Originally Posted by jdc2000

Windows 7 has AutoRun turned off by default for security reasons. There are ways to re-enable it, but if these are company laptops, the company IT department isn't likely to want to allow AutoRun to be enabled, since it makes the laptops much more vulnerable to malicious code.

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Understood. I, and the client, would be happy with just having it behave the same way a CD/DVD would. If you put a CD/DVD into a disk drive on Windows 7 (for instance) and the user hasn't changed the default options for how Windows handles the autorun, it would pop up with a list of AutoPlay options, the first being "Install or run program from your media" AutorunProgram.exe. That's all we're wanting to do. From the link Train posted and the one that I found, it looks like we should be able to make a section of the thumb drive (or the entire thing for all we care) partitioned to act like a CD-ROM (emphasis on Read Only). If we can get this to work, the client would be happy with that.

If the laptops have slots for flash memory cards, you could put the program on those and set up a Desktop shortcut to the program. That would eliminate the need for any autorun settings.

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Originally Posted by jdc2000

If the laptops have slots for flash memory cards, you could put the program on those and set up a Desktop shortcut to the program. That would eliminate the need for any autorun settings.

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Good thought, but I don't believe their laptops are all the same and unlikely they will all have built-in card readers. I'll look into this, though.

The two together should do the trick.
Mine, usb 3.0 sticks, I normally use them for boot drives with Linux on them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Webshark2000

Are most members of Virtual Dr. not expected to have already done at least basic research on a problem themselves? I may have reacted a little harshly, but you'd think I'd get a little more feedback than simply, "search Google". I may not have over 20,000 posts, but I'm also not new to the site by any means.

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My reply above was based on the information YOU wrote and didn't write.

When I googled the phrase I almost fell out of my chair when I saw how many hits were listed.

In a perfect world, people asking questions would in fact list out the steps they've taken to resolve their own issue... Doing so would eliminate some duplication of effort...