Is it possible to have a startup folder which can have shortcuts to prorams you want to run when the USB stick is plugged in?
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What do you mean?
Most people either use the PA menu or place shortcuts in the root directory.
Vintage!
You can't have a startup folder on a flash drive which functions like the startup folder in Windows. You can write an autorun.inf, but this will only work in WinXP /w SP2. For all other versions of Windows you're out of luck. You could try to pull a more complicated trick and fool Windows the same way U3 does, though. (by creating an autorun on a cd partition of your flash drive)
(to get really complicated)
You could make a bootable USB which adds your apps to the Startup folder on the harddrive (simple Linux distro could do it) then boots into Windows.
On unbooting, it removes these from the Startup folder.
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Ryan McCue
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
(Tom Lehrer)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Yes, but on public computers (which are typically already on when you access them) it would take longer to reboot than it would to just launch the programs by hand.
Do you know how to do this "fooling" of windows like u3? I thought about making a partition and formatting it as a cd and then as you said have an autorun.inf but I couldn't think how to do the formatting and I wasn't sure how you would know what the other drive letter was to call PStart etc but I am sure this is the least of the problems, if you know how to create this cd partition
keep your thumb drive in your computer forever and put the startportableapps.exe in the windows start up folder.(if you are a Portable Apps Menu User).
This is probably not what you are looking for though.
compile an autoit script to exe. There's what you need to do
Run(@ScriptDir & "\portableapps\firefox\firefox.exe")
Run(@ScriptDir & "\portableapps\thunderbird\thunderbird.exe")
etc.
then change your autorun.inf to run this new exe that you created.
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or a simple batch file