Autorun CD (do it yourself)
List of third-party autorun CD products
Read MSKB Article 173973, How to Run PPT Viewer from a CD
Do it yourself with the New Viewer (PPT 2002 and 2003)
PPT files can be either easy or difficult to autorun from a CD. If you have a very basic presentation with no movies, sounds, hyperlinks, etc., it’s pretty straightforward. If, however, you have any of the above, it can be a royal PITA.
Microsoft used to have an addin called the CD Wizard that you could download from their site. Either because the wizard often didn’t work–especially with presentations that include links to movies, images or sounds–or because MS seems to be moving to IE as a viewer, the wizard’s been “discontinued.” See MSKB Article 197933
You can find the CD Wizard out on the ‘net if you look, though. (Try typing keywords “PPT CD Wizard download”–without the quotation marks–into the searchbox at http://www.google.com)
Microsoft also used to have an MSKB article, “How to Run PowerPoint Viewer 97 from a Compact Disc,” but it has been pulled from the online MSKB archives as well. See MSKB Article 237891
I’ve put the old article here for you to read if you want to give it a shot, though. MSKB Article 173937 And MSKB Article 190091 gives a bit of information on making *.LST files
(These links don’t really send you to the Microsoft site. They actually link to MHT files I saved because Microsoft often zaps old KB articles without warning.)
Note: This stuff is WYSIWYG; I know very little about making autorun CDs, and I offer zero support for this. If you can’t get it to work, I suggest that you use one of the third-party solutions on the next page.
If you call MS and ask how to make an autorun CD with PPT, they’ll also steer you to the third-party solutions that are available. If you’ve read through the Viewer-CD and LST File articles and still can’t get your CD to work, then you need to use one of the third-party options. Trust me, they’ll make your life a lot easier.
Now let me recap for you do-it-yourselfers.
1. To make an autorun CD, you basically just need to make an autorun.inf file that has this in it:
[autorun] open=ppview32.exe presentpresent.lst
If you don’t want to make a LST file, you can just put the name of your presentation in place of present.lst above
2. The autorun.INF file goes in the root directory of your CD along with all the Viewer files listed in MSKB article 173973 Download the PPT Viewer 97 here.After you download it, double-click this file (ppview97.exe) to install the PPT Viewer to your hard drive. This is how you get all the Viewer files listed in MSKB article 173973.
Don’t use the PPT Viewer 97 from your install CDs, it’s out of date.
3. The present.LST file goes in a folder on your CD called present. Your presentation file goes in this folder, too. If you’ve used any movies or sounds in your presentation, they also go in this folder.
4. The ppview.dll file goes in a folder on your CD called setup.
NOTE: Movies and sounds not playing once a presentation is burned to CD is a common issue. If you’re having this problem, make sure you placed all of the movies and sounds in the same folder as your presentation *before* inserting them into the presentation.
If you’re still having problems, then you need to use a third-party program.
