SamLogic Software Blog

If you have documents (for example PDF or Word documents) that you want to distribute to other people via a CD, DVD or USB flash drive, CD-Menu Creator is the right tool for you. You can create a menu interface very fast and you can have clickable buttons that the end-user click on to open your documents.

If you have sensitive documents that you only want some specific persons open and read, you can password protect the access to the documents. You can also have the documents encrypted on the CD, DVD or USB flash drive, so nobody can read them directly on the disc or drive. And if any person copies the documents from the disc / drive to another place, they are unreadable. The documents can only be read via the menu interface and by entering the correct password. The menu interface will ask for a password when the end-user clicks on the button that opens the document.

Tip: How to password protect a document
The tip below explains how to password protect a document that is opened via a button in a menu interface that is created with CD-Menu Creator. The document will also be stored encrypted on the disc or drive, and can only be read via the menu interface.

1. Start CD-Menu Creator.

2. Open the Buttons (text) tab in the editor.

3. Click the Add Button button.

4. Enter a button text at Text (button).

5. Select the Show Document command in the Command combobox.

6. Click the “…” button and choose a document (for example a PDF document).

7. Click the Options button in the dialog box.

8. Open the Password tab.

9. Select the Password protect this button option.

10. Enter a password in the Password input box.

11. Select the Encrypt the file linked to the button option.

12. Click OK. And thereafter OK again.

13. Now create your menu!

After you have created your menu you can click on the button in the menu interface. A dialog box that asks for a password is now shown. Now enter the password that you entered at step 10 above to open the document. If you enter another text, the document can not be opened.

How to increase the security even more
The password and encryption function protects the document, so nobody can open it without the password. But if you also want to assure that nobody can save or print the document via the document viewer that is used to show the document, you must disable these functions in the document viewer or choose a document viewer that does not have this functionality. You can read the documentation to your document viewer/editor to find more information about this.

If you distribute a document viewer with your CD, DVD or USB flash drive, you can choose the Run Program command at step 5 above and enter the path to the document viewer in the Filename text box and a path to the document file in the Parameters input box. If needed, you can also enter some switches to the document viewer program in this input box.

Some document viewers have built-in encryption/decryption
Instead of using the encryption/decryption function in CD-Menu Creator, you can also use a document viewer that supports encryption and decryption. To have maximum security, this may be a better choice because they are specialized tools, and as a such, the security may be better.

See also
> CD-Menu Creator: How to encrypt a document without a password

In this blog post we explained how to protect a document with a password and how to store it encrypted on a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. Sometimes it may be useful to only have the document encrypted, but without requiring (asking for) a password. This is also possible with CD-Menu Creator.

If you follow the tip in the How to protect a document with a password blog post, but enters a hyphen (“-“) instead of a password at step 10 in the tip, the document will not be password protected; it will only be encrypted.

Copy protection
One benefit when doing this is that you will have a limited copy protection of your document. Nobody can copy the document directly from the CD, DVD or USB flash drive to another drive or disc, and have it opened. It can only be opened via CD-Menu Creator’s menu interface. If somebody tries to open the document in other way, it will not be opened because the contents is encrypted and will be unreadable for the document viewer or editor.

See also
> CD-Menu Creator: How to protect a document with a password

Sometimes an installed program must be run with administrator rights when it is started. This gives the program more privileges, which sometimes is necessary to make a program function as expected. In Visual Installer you can set an installed program to run with administrator privileges in an easy way.

To make an installed program to run with administrator rights you can right-click on the program file in Visual Installer’s file list and choose the Run as administrator menu item in the menu that is shown. Thereafter you can select the Run program as administrator option in the dialog box that appears and press OK (see picture below).

After installation, the installed program will be run with administrator rights when it is started. If the UAC is activated in the Windows, the system will ask the end-user for permission before it elevates the privileges.

Before AutoRun can work with USB flash drives in a computer, our AutoRun driver must be installed in the computer. You can distribute the AutoRun driver with your USB stick or you can let the user download and install it from the Internet.

In some situations using the Internet can be the preferable way because you can email your customers in advance and let them download and install the driver from your web site. And thereafter, when they receive your USB stick, AutoRun will work immediately when they plug the USB stick into the USB port.

When you install USB AutoRun Creator, the product is installed in this folder on your hard drive as default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SamLogic\USB AutoRun Creator

If you look in this folder, you will find the following file there:

SETUP-USB-Supervisor-Internet.exe

You can upload this file to your web server and let the user download it, when needed.

The SETUP-USB-Supervisor-Internet.exe file is a small installation package, and the installation is very simple. The following two steps-wizard is shown to the user:

Step 1:

Step 2:

So the installation of the AutoRun driver is done in seconds.

See also
> USB AutoRun Creator – Overview (PDF)

Sometimes the fonts that are included in Windows are not enough, and you need to distribute your own font(s) with your software. But before they can be used in another computer, they must be installed in the right system folder and registered in the system.

Luckily Visual Installer supports installation and registration of fonts. So it is easy to add a font to your installation and have it installed and registered in another computer. In the tip below we will show how to add a font file to an installation project and how to make sure it will be registered in the system during the installation.

How to install and register a font with Visual Installer

1. Open your project or create a new project.

2. Choose the menu item List – Add – Add files.

3. Browse and select your font file (must be a file with the filename extension .ttf).

(If you want to add a font file that is located in C:\Windows\Fonts, you can first copy the font file to another folder that you create, for example C:\MyFonts. Thereafter you add the font file to Visual Installer´s file list from C:\MyFonts. Adding the font directly from C:\Windows\Fonts may not always work because it is a special folder.)

4. Click Open in the Add files dialog box.

5. In the next dialog box that is shown, make sure that the destination folder is %FONTDIR.

6. Click OK to close the Destination folder dialog box.

7. Now select the font file in the file list.

8. Choose the menu item List – Register font.

9. Enter a font name in the Font name text box in the Register font dialog box.

10. Make sure that the Register this font after installation option is selected.

11. Click OK.

You have now added a font file to your installation project and it will be installed in Windows font folder, and registered in a proper way, during the installation.