Running applications from a CD

[gladner]

I was wondering if there is a way to run applications driectly from a CD.

The computers at my school don't have Maple (for those that don't know it, it's a math program that can do things I can't do by hand) so I was wondering if I could install it onto a CD and run it from the CD drive on these computers. I cannot install anything on the computers or add anything to their registry for obvious reasons.

So is it possible? and if so how do install something to a CD?

thanks in advance

 

[Glaanieboy]

By the looks of the complexity of the program, Maple uses an installer of some sort. To my knowledge, there is no way of installing this on a cd, since it would require direct CD access, with a folder for temporary files etc and a CD is just waaaaay too slow for this task. What you also can't do, is to install the program, and copy the contents of the install folder to a CD, because most programs of this magnitude require temorary files and/or a storage for program settings etc.

Sorry mate.

 

[gladner]

damn, well... I guess I'll have to integrate by hand then

 

[lechtard]

The only way possible to do such a thing is if the prog is a self executable ... So if "Maple" is not self exacutable then it won't be possible ..

 

[gladner]

could i use a removable usb drive??
(I'm just grabbing at straws here)

 

[muzikool]

Basically, if a program uses an installer, then it usually adds files into the operating system (such as the registry). For the program to run correctly from a USB drive, CD, floppy, or zip disk, it would need to have the ability to run without such files loaded into the OS. In other words, as lechtard said, it would probably have to be a self executable. Chances are that you're going to be out of luck on this one.

 

[dave holbon]

You can install any programme to a CD drive, it’s just like any other drive as far as the operating system is concerned (well that’s the theory). However it must usually be a re-writable drive to record both input and output (read and writes) so as to take into account configuration changes/security or client/server issues. CD/DVD drives of any format can be simulated (including re-writable DVD’s) on an ordinary hard drive, indeed Nero can do this as can other software. However the down side is that it will be so slow as to be almost unusable once more that a few users have logged on. There are ways round this by using programming techniques and multiple images of the same programme on your drive which must of course be configured as a “server” on the network. The up-side is that users don’t need to install the programme on their local machine it can all be run from yours providing you provide some sort of minor scripting interface on each user’s machine. This is or could be just an icon with a small login/setup script or even bypassing the client/server model (whilst still using the protocols) and implementing a “Overnet/Kazza” type file sharing system as these are not difficult to implement and are peer-to-peer (machine to machine) implementations. But this will require (on each individual computer) your small script to be installed which will or might require some registry entries but there are way around this.

 

[muzikool]

Dave, I can see how that would work, but if the user account on the local machine doesn't allow registry changes, then how can the script be installed (without hacking of course)?