PStart

Windows specifically disallows autorun from USB devices.

Lifehacker explains it here: http://lifehacker.com/software/portable-applications/hack-attack-quickla...

From the article:

"Setting up Autoplay

The key to this whole thing is a Windows "feature" called Autoplay. Although it's caused a bit of controversy in its time, Autoplay remains enabled on most Windows computers. Don't worry - in this case we're going to be using Autoplay purely for good.

Setting up Autoplay is a no-brainer. Create a new text file on the home directory of your thumb drive and name it autorun.inf. There are a number of different ways to deal with autorun.inf, but to keep things simple, I'm just going to use it to run a batch file that will set up our workspace (batch files are easy, and we've used batch scripts several times before, so they should be pretty familiar).

Copy and paste the following text into your autorun.inf text file:

[autorun]
open=launch.bat
ACTION = Launch portable workspace

[autorun]
open=launch.bat
ACTION = Launch portable workspace

That's really all there is to it. Next time you plug in your thumb drive, Autoplay should give you the option to "Launch portable applications." Now all that's left to do is create our launch.bat batch file, which will tell us exactly what we want to run when we plug in our thumb drive.
Setting up launch.bat

In the same directory as your autorun.inf file, create a new text file and name it launch.bat. From this point on, we're pretty much dealing with quick launch workspaces, though we're looking for ideas that will work well on a portable drive. For example, you could set up your thumb drive to automatically launch:

* Tiddlywiki:

If you use Tiddlywiki (and I know a lot of Lifehacker readers love it), you could easily launch it with the following batch script:

start tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

start tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

Keep in mind that you never want to use the drive name when you're setting up your batch script, as this is likely to change depending on what computer you're plugged into. Instead, just omit the drive letter altogether and start with the folder or file name that you want to open.
* Portable applications:
file%20structure.png
file%20structure.png

Pretty simple, huh? Of course, if you wanted to open Tiddlywiki in your own portable browser, like Portable Firefox, you'd want to tweak this a little bit. Here's what I'd change it to (omitting line breaks):

start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

Easy peasy. Now you can automatically run Tiddlywiki on Portable Firefox as soon as you plug in your thumb drive. The same structure will work for pretty much any portable app you run on your computer. If you want to launch more than one application when you plug in your thumb drive, it's just as easy; just add a couple more lines to your launch.bat script. For example:

start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html
start portableapps\portablethunderbird.exe
start portableapps\portableopenoffice.exe
start portableapps\pstart.exe

start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html
start portableapps\portablethunderbird.exe
start portableapps\portableopenoffice.exe
start portableapps\pstart.exe

portable%20firefox.png
portable%20firefox.png

will open Tiddlywiki in Portable Firefox, along with Portable Thunderbird, Open Office, and Filezilla. When it comes to organizing and launching apps from your thumb drive after you're all plugged in, PStart is a good start menu for the thumb drive. My favorite application launcher, Launchy, would be even better for launching apps directly off your thumb drive, but it's not quite ready for that yet (it was really very close)."

The above method worked for me when I used it to autorun PStart from a USB drive.
If all else fails, I can make you a copy of the autorun files for you.

- Nick

I seem to lose my pstart setting everytime I use a different computer. Currently using pstart 2.09.. and when I'm happy with all the settings... I get annoyed when I use my thumb drive on different computers..all my settings ARE lost!! They're back to the original plain settings... whats going on?

Didnt' have a problem with version 2.08

I figure that if you enable autorun so that nice, well-behaved programs like Pstart can use it, then nasties on CDROMs can use it as well.

Better safe than sorry, I figure. I just put Pstart.exe in the top-level directory of my TrueCrypted USB drive and start it manually from there.