Custom resource cd

A computer's life cycle is about 3 years. That's what I hear anyway. We have some computers here (still working) that are over 5 years old. When we get new computers for users here there is a set of software that goes onto each machine. Acrobat Pro6, Acrobad Reader, In-Out Board, Outlook Messenger, printer drivers, fonts and more.

What I've done in the past is just install these softwares from a network "drive" called Software which, if you think about it, is where all the software is located. Makes sense.

Then I got the idea of creating a cd that has all that stuff on it already. I used to make photo web sites on a locale computer then burn the "site" to a cd and have it autorun when loaded into a cd drive. It was very handy when I wanted to send a bunch of pictures to a relative. they load the cd and up pops a web site that they can browse and see pics of my kids. That was about 10 years ago.

So that's what I did for my Resource CD.

First I needed a web template. There are some great sites that provide open source web templates such as Open Source Web Designs, freewebsitetemplates.com, Open Web Design and a great list at DesignVitality.com.

So I pick a nice CSS design from freecsstemplates.org and rework it to list all the software I need to install on a machine. I also add serial codes to the main "page" to make life easier.

Here's where i had some trouble. I wanted to be able to "run" programs from the html page. I didn't want to be asked where I want to save the file to. I just wanted it to run. After a while of searching the internet I found that all you have to do is rename the index.html file to index.HTA. This will open the file into a different window and allow you to run the files you want.

After I get it looking just the way I want I copy the autorun files from another cd and tweak them to point to the new index.hta file.

I made two versions. One has basic software that is on all the computers here. All the data fits easily on a cd. I made another version that has more software to choose from which needed a DVD to fit it all on to.

Try to download an ISO I made here.

UPDATE: link is broken. sorry.