Having initally struggled to get Reader to work from CD as advertised a coolected together some information on this subject to help others avoid the hassle and the PDF is the result. It explains, for the non-expert, how to build a CD that will AutoPlay Acrobat Reader from the CD. Please take a moment to read the notes on this page before you grab the file below.

The PDF was created in Word97/Acrobat v4.05c but should read fine in Exchange/Reader v3.x or in Acrobat/Reader v5.x.

Does this method only work with Reader v4.? No! Though the document was created when v4.0x was current if you read on you'll find the information is as good for v4.x/5.x/6.x.

Main Topics

• Who is this for?
• Acrobat Reader on CD
• Setting up content files for the CD
• Creating an Autoplay CD (for Windows)
• Cross-platform issues and CD formats
• Appendices: Adobe TS docs, file lists, reference links etc.

I'm neither a programmer nor a PostScript expert - indeed, that is the very reason I did the research that became this PDF. I certainly know more about Acrobat/Reader than when I started out - I hope you do too if you read the PDF.

The PDF has internal bookmarks and some external (web) links for major references.

Don't forget - if your browser is set to open/read PDFs and you just want to download the file, in Windows right-click and use "Save Target As..." and on Macs click/hold for the context menu and "Save Target As...".

ReaderCD.PDF (approx 400kb). Version v1.2.3, 09 Dec 99 - with later annotations.

Reader_on_CD_2-0-0.PDF (approx 630kb). Current version v2.0, March 2001.

Enjoy!

But what if I'm using v4.05c?

Apart from the actual files installed the procedures are unchanged with Reader v4.05. If you are still using v4 instead of v5 for any reason make sure you have v4.05c the last v4.x version.

Get the single file installers; these are ar405eng.exe without the search plug-in or rs405eng.exe with it. The 'eng' part of the name implies English language but other language are denoted by similar codes, e.g. 'fre' for French or 'deu' for German.

Get a list of the files installed by rs405eng.exe.

But what if I'm using v5.x/6.x?

Indeed, the same principles apply as for v4 when using v5. The lastest version is v5.05 which replaces v5.0.1. Apart from some bug fixes, the new version addresss compatabilty issues running under Windows 2000 and XP.

If you don't need use ebook security aspects and the like you can experiment with moving the docbox.api plug-in to the \optional\ folder as it conflicts with some OS variants, especialy older ones.

Get a list of the files installed by rp505eng.exe. The naming syntax of the installer exe files is described in the section above.