CDswitch 0.8.4

What?
Well, the only CD/DVD-switching utility (I found) on this board didn't seem to do what I needed, so I made myself a new one. I've put it online if anyone else wants to give it a go. By now it's way more advanced than any other CD-tool out there.

Features?
Compatible with: batchfiles, RunOnceEx, XPlode, ... all install methods I guess.
Can be run at: T-12 (cmdlines.txt), RunOnceEx, GuiRunOnce (haven't tested any others, maybe I'll do that soon)
Works with both CD, DVD and probably the future optical media like BluRay 'n stuff.

I'm going to divide the features in three modes, to keep it understandable:

Normal Mode (with a GUI and all features)

• Pops up a box asking for a disc with a certain label. It won't go away until that disc is entered in the drive you specified. When a wrong or no disc is inserted, that drive ejects again. The only thing you have to do is insert the disc, nothing more (no clicking OK or pressing ENTER).
• Detect the drive you want to use by specifying drive letter, drive number (first drive, second drive, ...) or by detecting the drive with a certain disc in it (by file or label).
• Supress AutoRun / AutoPlay so nothing pops up when a new disc is inserted
• Play a sound to notify you
• Launch an application or file after the correct disc is inserted (like a new batchfile/RunOnceEx/...) and eventually wait hidden until that application is closed again (handy for one-application-discs).
• Logging-capabilities
• Customizable: your own image (JPG/GIF/BMP), set transparency, change the label (font face/colour/size/weight/location/italic/underline/strikethrough) or hide it.
• Exit anytime by hitting ESC.

Silent Mode (no GUI)

• Eject or close all drives or one drive
• Detect the drive you want to use by specifying drive letter, drive number (first drive, second drive, ...) or by detecting the drive with a certain disc in it (by label or file).

Variables mode (write away drive letters to a variable)[list]
[*] Create or delete variables from all drives (%CD1%, %CD2%, ...).
[*] Detect the drive you want to write to a variable by specifying drive letter, drive number (first drive, second drive, ...) or by detecting the drive with a certain disc in it (by label or file). (%CDDRIVE%)
Screenshots
This is the stuff you see when you don't customize anything:


Same window, but with some transparency, borderless, and showing off some label-changes you can apply. You can make it more pretty of course:


Using it
Basic usage is pretty simple:



This will launch cdswitch, ejecting drive D: and searching for the disc with the label "LABEL".
If you want to use more parameters, they are all explained in the help-file.

As the number of features grows, I decided it was a bit hard to explain them all (I did tho), so I created another app to simplify all of it:



First, pick your mode on the top left (all explained in the beginning of this post), then check/fill in what you want or need and press "Generate and copy". The parameters itself are displayed in the textbox,but you can also paste a full batchfile/RunOnceEx/XPlode-entry in your script after clicking the button. If you want some explanation about a certain item, just rest your mouse on it. All of them have a tooltip.

Updating from previous versions
- The parameter "/w" has been renamed to "/rw".
- There's a new default image, if you don't like it, just put the contents of this archive in the same folder as CDswitch. It'll restore the old image.
- Variables Mode has been rewritten, all parameters have changed!

Download
CDswitch 0.8.4 (169k) -- the actual program
CDswitch parameter generator 0.1 (161k) -- to generate parameters on an easy way
CDswitch Help 16/07/2005 (213k) -- the help-file
Retro image (23k) -- the old CDswitch-look (from versions 0.4 to 0.7)

New since previous release
- General improvements and bugfixes.
- Rewritten Variables Mode fully and Silent Mode a bit.
- New default image.
- Detect the drive you want to use with "/f:VALUE". VALUE being a file.
- "/b" parameter to hide the border
- "/l" parameter to override displayed text
- "/s" parameter to display a sound
- ErrorLevel is now set on how CDswitch exits
- More lay-out settings for labels (underline/italic/strike)
- Added .INI-support (more to come in 0.9)
- Added *DRIVE*-variable to refer to inserted disc (in 0.8.2)
- No longer does the drive eject when it shouldn't (in 0.8.2)
- Use "/wl" and "/wt" to move the location of the window itself (in 0.8.4)

The full changelog is attached to this post.

Note on future releases
(08/08)
0.9 will be focused on working with multiple drives. Bear with me, as it takes some time to implement, and it's vacation.
1.0 will see a rewrite of the helpfile, complete with examples and how-to's.
Other features, improvements and fixes will be implemented down the road.

Report your feedback please. Thanks for trying it out ^^

This post has been edited by Nanaki: Sep 8 2008, 12:16 PM

- removed: info about old version -

Low interest?
Well, I know I'm interested in this. Graphical way to change CDs during uA is a great addition!
As for lack of posts in here.... that's got to be because topics just keep running away from main index. And then, ppl normally post only when they have a question, so....

Keep up the good work Nanaki - I'd like to see how this goes ahead to capture attention of users.

Thanks

0.3b:
- Tray now opens when no disc is inserted
- When the correct disc is already present, the tray won't eject
- The disc-letter must now be supplied

0.3 (20-03)
- Code clean-up, it's a bit faster now
- Error repressing of parameters, informing you about what you did wrong
- Instead of "f:" as a drive now "f" can also be used.
- Hitting ESC will exit the program
- The supplied drive is checked if its a CD/DVD-drive and if it exists

There, that's enough for today. ^^

I like it....
perhaps when my setup moves from one DVD to two I'll use it Should be anytime now....

How did you do that?!? I'm still on two discs and I think I have a lot.

I still have to implement Visual Studio .net though. >_<

Photoshop, Acrobat Projessional, Office 2003, Visual Studio Architect, Dreamweaver, Steam (won't include the complete cache as it alone takes two DVDs so I only include CS and CS:Source), PowerDVD, VMWare + Virtual PC.

I was thinking of adding Starcraft,Warcraft 3 and a few others just for fun.

That's all?
Why leave it at just one OS+apps and one games disc? Why not add a music disc and then a whateverelseyoucanthinkof disc?
One of these days your uA is going to explode under the sheer weight of all that you have put in it.

Anyways, I hope you use RW discs? (because otherwise you'll be wasting discs like insane)

Indeed. 4 RW's. 2 for the current working release, 2 for the one I'm working on. That way, if I screw up, I still got a working copy

- All DriverPacks
- ACDSee, Acrobat7, Azureus, BSplayer, DC++, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Firefox, Irfanview, Java, Kaspersky, KCeasy + FastTrack, Kerio, mIRC, msAntiSpyware, MSN, Photoshop, PowerToys, Thunderbird, FileZilla, Flash/Shockwave, all codecs, Real, Quicktime, WiMP10, Office 2k3, Nero + NeroVision + LanguagePacks, OpenOffice 2b, Paint.NET, Spybot, TrueDownloader, VMware, VMware Tools (for testing), Winamp, WinRAR, WinSCP, XPize, .NET Framework, Regshot, SiSoftware Sandra, VB6 runtimes and Steam (HL one and CS:S). All with their own seperate configurations.
- All the current Hotfixes (installed seperatly)
- XPlode
- My spiffy app ^^

Total: 973 MB

O.o

Looks very neat. Looking forward to testing it. Thanks.

If found to be stable, perhaps the moderators can add this to the download list.

Which download list? You mean the one on the Unattended site? If so, then the moderators don't have control over it. I do And I already like it better then the one written by devil (no offense)

It's perfectly stable to be used in your discs.



Which one's that? Maybe I could learn. ^^

0.4a (21-03):
- GUI variabled updated
- Image files can now be of different size. Make 'em as large as you want, the app detects the size.
- cdswitchback.jpg, cdswitchback.gif and cdswitchback.bmp can now be used. If multiple are found: JPG > BMP > GIF

download here

This post has been edited by Nanaki: Sep 19 2007, 08:28 AM

http://unattended.msfn.org/global/downloads.htm

CDR

I meant in Unattended Tools
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=32957

As to this one:
http://unattended.msfn.org/global/downloads.htm

I find having two lists somewhat inconsistent.