Running a windows program from a CD?

>Hi, I have a schoolbook on a cd

If you can post the name of the software program, we might be able to help further -- it could be that the schoolbook program is simply a wrapper around the actual information, and you might be able to bypass the program altogether by accessing the data directly.

Can you post the contents of the Autrun.ini file on the CD? this will have the command to open the correct executable.

Finally,if you are unable to do the above, you might be able to run the program by opening a terminal, typing "wine" then dragging the excutable you want to run into the terminal:

http://www.chrislees.info/ubuntu/easy-run-files.shtml

Holt English Onestop is the name of the program. there is no "autorun.ini file. there is an autorun.inf file, however. the contents of "autorun.inf" are
[autorun]

icon = icon.ico

open=Launch_OneStop.exe

accessing the data directly is not practical. there are hundreds of pages in pdf format. it take like 15 minutes to find the page i need.

when i drag the executable into terminal, i get this:

fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:win:RegisterDeviceNotificationA (hwnd=0x138510, filter=0xc9e9d4,flags=0x00000001) returns a fake device notification handle!
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L"Bonjour Service"): stub
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IP optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER: unimplemented WSARecvMsg
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IPV6 optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER: unimplemented WSARecvMsg
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub
fixme:iphlpapi:DeleteIpForwardEntry (pRoute 0x78e8b4): stub
fixme:iphlpapi:CreateIpForwardEntry (pRoute 0x78e87c): stub
fixme:service:EnumServicesStatusW 0x128690 type=30 state=3 (nil) 0 0x78e7e8 0x78e7f4 0x78e7f0
fixme:advapi:ReportEventA (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064,(nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x78e5f8,(nil)): stub
fixme:advapi:ReportEventW (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064,(nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x123ba8,(nil)): stub
fixme:netapi32:NetGetJoinInformation Stub (null) 0x78e688 0x78e690
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IP optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER: unimplemented WSARecvMsg
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IPV6 optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER: unimplemented WSARecvMsg
 and then the free space error i got before. any othe suggestions? and thanks for the fast response.

try:

wine /media/cdrom0/Launch_OneStop.exe

Should help

If actionparsnip's command still does not work, you can install a local PDF search engine, such as "recoll", and telll it to index all the PDFs under the copied-to-hard-drive location. Then you can just type in the text you are looking for, just like any normal search engine.

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/114283

to install recoll, simply go to the software repository (software-centre), and type "recoll", or in a terminal

sudo aptitude install recoll

actionparsnip's command did not work. it gave me the executable bit error. and mycae, recoll only searches the names of the documents. not the text inside them. the names of the pdfs do not correspond to the page numbers, so recoll is useless. thanks anyway.

you could install playonlinux and run it that way.

>recoll only searches the names of the documents. not the text inside them
Recoll does full-text search -- I use it all the time. It might be that they do not have text inside the PDFs, and have made everything images.

man, actionparsnip, i almost thought i had it. the program ran fine through playonlinux and wine, but when i go to click on a page, it says: "error. this content is on the dvd (or cd). please insert the dvd (or cd) in your disk drive". for one, i have the disk in, and for 2, i have the application fully installed, so it should not need the cd. i am guessing that the program cannot point me to the correct pdf. it probably is looking for a windows directory cd drive, and cannot find one. something is stopping the program from reaching the pdfs. thanks alot though, that's the closest i've got it to be working so far.

and mycae, you're right. recoll sees the pdfs as images, not text.

Please, could you mark question solved (by pointing on mycae answer).

no, because it has not been solved. i still cannot view the pdfs through the onestop program.

Eddie:

Unfortunately, if you have been unable to get it to work, without a copy of that software to play with, we will not be able to assist you much further.

There are (at least) three options left, but all are quite advanced, and would take a lot of time to do, and a fairly hefty knowledge of programming, and may not be worth the effort:
1) You could use optical character recognition software to extract the text from the PDFs (such as tesseract)-- you could then use that to insert text back into the PDFs so recoll can index them.
2) You can use strace to track what file open calls it is making at the time when it asks you to insert the cd, then trick it with a symlink at that location to the actual data.
3) You can find how they are doing the searching -- it is probably an SQL database or similar -- you could then hook into that to run your own searches. If they are trying to prevent copying by doing things like making the PDFs images rather then text, then They may have done nasty things like encrypt the database and stuffed the key into the executable program. This would be annoying to have to reverse out, but certainly possible.

thanks anyway everyone, but i downloaded a vista cd from the internet (don't worry i have the license key, nothing illegal here), and used that and virtualbox to run my cd. case closed