How to create a distribution disk containing the Publisher's License of Create A Quiz's Student's Edition

When you purchase the Publisher's License, you will receive an email from us containing download instructions on where to find your customized version of the Student's Edition.  The file you will download will be called INSTALL.EXE.  This one INSTALL.EXE file contains everything necessary to install Create A Quiz Student's Edition onto anyone's Windows PC.

The instructions below pertain to distributing the software on a 3.5" diskette, but the same principles apply to creating a CD.

1) Place the INSTALL.EXE file onto a blank disk (yes, it will fit on a 3.5" diskette with plenty of free room to spare)

2) Copy the .QZ quiz files from your hard drive to the 3.5" diskette.  Your .QZ files are typically found in the c:\program files\Create A Quiz 5 folder, under My Computer

3) Copy the corresponding .CFG file for each quiz to the 3.5" diskette.  A .CFG file is the configuration file that is created when you define/specify certain options via the "Options > Misc. configuration options" function from within the Create A Quiz Teacher's Edition quiz editor window.

4) If you have any bitmap images that are associated with your .QZ quiz file, then copy those files likewise to the 3.5" diskette.  The same applies to any .TXT reference files, and .WAV sound files and .AVI multimedia files.  If your quiz uses images, sound or multimedia files, you will find that your 3.5" diskette will not hold all of these files.  Instead, use a CD to create your distribution disk.

5) Other files that you may wish to place on your distribution disk are the following files IF you have created them:  QUIZ.INI, QUIZ.HI, QUIZ.BYE, QUIZ.HLP

How do you copy files from your hard drive to the 3.5" floppy drive?  One way is to open TWO My Computer windows.  One should be open to Drive A, and the other should be open to where you have your master .QZ quiz files stored.  Then just drag and drop the files from one window to the other.  See example below:

6) Once you have all of the files you wish placed onto the 3.5" diskette, you would then use it as the master to make copies from.

7) When you hand one of the copied disks to your customer/student/employee, you would instruct them to launch (double click) on the INSTALL.EXE file.  When they do this, the Installation Wizard will appear, and will prompt the user through the installation process (which is very simple...just click "Next >", "Next >", "Next >" and "Finish".

This Installation Wizard not only installs Create A Quiz Student's Edition onto the end user's computer, but it will also copy/install all of the other files that you have placed on the 3.5" diskette (i.e., your .QZ, .CFG, .INI, etc. files).  At the end of the installation procedure, the user will find an icon (desktop shortcut) on their Desktop.  This icon will have the caption reflecting the custom title that you have instructed our programmers to rename the program to.  For example:

Double clicking on this icon will launch Create A Quiz Student's Edition.

Enjoy!

How to create an auto-launching CD:

The Student's Edition Publisher's License will be provided to you (the customer) as ONE single INSTALL.EXE file. This one file This INSTALL.EXE will never auto-launch. You can, however, create a AUTORUN.INF file and place it on the CD. This AUTORUN.INF file is what your operating system looks for whenever a new CD is inserted into a PC's CD tray. However, keep in mind that it is possible that the user has DISABLED the auto-launching feature, for security reasons. Therefore, it is not possible to guarantee that CDs will auto-launch on every user's PC to whom you distribute the CDs to.

As mentioned above, The autorun feature is implemented by putting an .inf file in the parent directory of the CD-ROM. Just create a text file called AUTORUN.INF and include the following information in it:

[autorun]
open=install.exe

Related questions and answers:

Q: Your INSTALL.EXE is neat, however, I do not want to install Create A Quiz to the user's hard drive.  Instead, I want to have Create A Quiz auto-launch from the CD that I plan to distribute.  How do I accomplish this?

A: The INSTALL.EXE file is a ZIP compatible file.  If you open the Student's Edition Publisher's License INSTALL.EXE file with Winzip, or The Unzip Wizard, you will find many internal files packed within this one INSTALL.EXE file.   To accomplish what you have requested, you will need to extract/unzip the following files:

STUDENT.EXE
STUDENT.MY
QZPRINT.EXE
QUIZ.INI

These 4 files are essential to the operation of the Student's Edition.  Since you have indicated that you do not want to use the convenient INSTALL.EXE installation wizard to install the Student's Edition to the user's hard drive, you will have to place these 4 files onto your distribution media (in this case, a CD-ROM).  In addition to these 4 essential files, you will also need to place your .QZ quiz files, and any associated .CFG configuration files, .TXT reference files, bitmap images, etc. to the same distribution media (the CD).  Lastly, since you want Create A Quiz to auto-launch, you will need to create an AUTORUN.INF file and place it on the CD.  In this AUTORUN.INF file you will have the following:

[autorun]
open=student.exe

Assuming that the recipient's PC is configured to auto-launch CDs that are placed in the CD tray, the CD you create (following the instructions above) will result in the Student's Edition auto-launching.

One word of warning when unbundling the install.exe and using the student.exe directly from a CD: a CD is a read-only medium, and cannot store scoreboard files, log files, and other temporary files that are created when the Student's Edition is run directly from a CD. The user will receive warning messages at various stages of taking a quiz when the student.exe resides on a CD. The warning messages will state that temporary files could not be created (due to the medium being a read-only device). To avoid these warning messages, you should modify the QUIZ.INI file accordingly...  Under the [Configuration] section add the following line:
 
TempPath=c:\temp\quiz
 
Then place the QUIZ.INI file onto the CD.  If the Student's Edition (STUDENT.EXE)  finds the TempPath value in the QUIZ.INI file, it will use the newly defined temporary path as the temporary folder path instead of the drive/folder where the program is currently located (which in most cases is Drive D, a read-only medium).