Hey Guy's!

I got a CD from a friend a while ago that doesn't install on you PC but it keeps track of what you did in the "Study Program" where you are, notes you made ect...

I'm suspecting the "Study Guide" was done in Flash cause there is 2 folders on the disk one Empty & one with only 550kb data or something in & then! on the root of the Cd is a 550MB .exe file, a autorun file & one other file that is also less than a 1MB!

Can anybody think of with programing lang this was done in? There is also Audio, ect in the program that play's as you progress & explains things to you...

Come to think of it it's a lot like the PC Format Cover Disk just a lot more advance...

Just One More Q:

Now i was wondering if you can do the same with VB or Delphi, is it posible to write a program that doesn't need data access ect, just a bunch of forums with small text files that keep the data! Drop it on a CD & then compile it in some way that you don't need to install it?? But it Still Works Perfect...???

Ok do your self a favour and get a resource hacker/viewer and point
it to that chubby exe. You will notice that all the data is in the exe. I'm
not sure that VB (The Tool of the Devil) can do this but I'm pretty sure
with some begging you can get delphi to do the same.

I was probably done with Macromedia Director,Flash, breeze and i can't remember the other one. Flash can do this fairly easy, as well as director but director is more focused on CD type(exe) presentations and e-learninf, where breeze is a new product specifically for e-learning and demo purposes.

It would be possible to write this with a more conventional programming language, but there are a few drawbacks like if you use vb the user must have the runtime files and with c# he need the .net framework. Reading from text files (would rathe use xml) is easy enough (just use someform of Application.StartUp Path structure).

cheers

Whatever language it was done in, it is impossible to store data without access to a permanent, writable storage medium. The CD is came on is no such medium, since it is not writable. There is no way the EXE can be adding data to itself while being run off the disk - it simply is not possible.

The app is most likely done in Flash, and it is writing to your harddrive somehow. Just because you don't know where the data is, doesn't mean it isn't there. The CD doesn't have to install anything: all PC's have a C:, and its likely writing to C:\ or some folder. The folder/files may be hidden.

Is the progress data available when you put the CD in another computer? I would think not?

Not always, there are a couple at work that don't have. Don't ask me how, but they work. But the program would most likely look in the registry for the root.

I think the most likely place the files would be stored is in the Documents and Settings folder, under the user's profile. If you log in with a different profile and run the program, and if the progress data is different, I can almost guarantee it's there.

Yes I agree, sorry should have mentioned it in my post, probably best place is somewhere in the user profile, or if the user creates a username afile based on that user id and some other random string.

Ahh yes, environment variables! Good point. Very likely to be there. Best way to check is to run the CD from another account and see if the data is still there. If so, they must be storing in Program Files or some other global system folder.

I also got sniff in the nose cause i know that you can't write to the CD again so the program needs to store data on a HDD somewhere, so i did a search for new files after i ran the CD & found a new folder on the C drive with a couple of small files in! (Sorry should have mentioned that in the post before)

The main reason i asked was to find out what you guy's thought the program was done in & if could be done in another language!

Thanx for all the help!

Ok I know you all ripping me off for saying that the exe can write
to itself and store stuff in its resources section but I was just making a
point as to were it stores its data.