Portable Applications are all the buzz these days. Being able to take your personal work environment with you without lumping around a laptop is an appealing proposition.

AutoStart

AutoStart provides quick access to the applications stored on your USB Flash Drive. It is a core component of "The Libertà Project" aimed at launching Portable Applications.

AutoStart monitors USB Flash Drives and shows icons in the notification area of the taskbar for attached drives. It then creates a menu containing applications on the drive that appears when the notification area icon is right clicked.

Portable Applications

Applications are called Portable when they are not bound to any one computer for their configuration and settings.

Portable Applications are easy to take with you on a USB Flash Drive or Portable Hard Drive.

Truly portable applications leave no trace on the computer on which they run. Some applications need to be modified to become truly portable, others are already portable by nature.

The Libertà Project

Libertà consists of modules and tools to help you create portable applications and to make it easy to take them with you.

See also The Libertà Project website.

AutoStart Features

  • Creates an icon in the notification area for every flash drive connected.
  • Start menu for launching applications. Shown when icon is right clicked.
  • Left clicking a trayicon will run app specified by 'shell' value in autorun.inf
  • Right click drive icon gives menu with Unplug/Eject drive option.
  • Eject drive implemented directly through Windows API calls.
  • Designed to leave no trace on a PC when not installed.
  • Tiny, 90KB compressed with exe compressor.
  • Installer is built-in. So it can install itself on flash drives or on the PC.
  • Supports most of the standard Microsoft autorun.inf features.
  • Automatically generates or updates autorun.inf with applications it finds during installation on a flash drive.

System Requirements

AutoStart does not work on 'old windows' e.g. Windows 98. The minimum system requirements are Windows 2000. Testing is being conducted on Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP2.

Download

AutoStart is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Click the following link to download

AutoStart