I am trying to write a batch file to open a player with an avi file loaded that will run from a CD drive. All files including the Batch File will run from the CD drive. I've tried using: "IF EXIST d:\player.exe Start d:\player.exe video.avi" for each drive letter, but that spits out an error message "no disc in drive d:" if there isn't a disc in that drive. For those who have multiple CD drives I need the batch file to verify which drive the CD is in and then set the proper path to the player and video. In the end I want to create an html menu that will have a link to the batch file to open the player with the video loaded.

MissMe I know there are probably better ways to do this but what I do is search for a file that I put on the cd rom and it finds it and sets the cd rom to that letter. Here is the code I us. In the code you will see that I search for standard.txt which I put on the cd or dvds. @echo off for %%a in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%a:\standard.txt set CDROM=%%a echo Your CDROM is %CDROM%

Sorry, I also went to put this line of code in as well. Then we you call the cd rom instead of using d:\player.exe you can use %CDROM%:\player.exe

Thank you mitchell311. I tried your code and it worked great at playing the file and it's much easier to write that way than the way I was, but it still gives me a "no disc in drive.." error for multiple drives. Does anyone know a way to avoid the error message? Is it impossible to check a drive without accessing the drive (which causes the error message)? I guess the question is, Is there a way to check if a drive is empty without actually accessing it? The only other option that I can think of is asking the user to tell what drive letter it is and setting the CDROM to that letter, but that isn't practical. Some users wouldn't have a clue!

If you do an if statement and lets say search for a file (lets say standard.txt on the cdrom). If it does not find the file it will just close the batch file. I believe this way it would not come up with an error. The script would just end.

My original batch file is an if statment somthing like below. IF EXIST d:\player.exe Start d:\player.exe d:\video.avi IF EXIST e:\player.exe Start e:\player.exe d:\video.avi But if there are two drives for instance, D: and E: and drive d: is empty and E: contains my disc, then it first checks d: and spits out the error then it will run from the e: drive. So the disc runs, but I think the error message might be confusing to users. It's probably not a huge issue, because I'm sure it would only happen to a handful of users.. but.. I'd like to get rid of the error message if I can.

Try this Vol D: >Nul 2>&1 If not ErrorLevel 1 Start D:... Vol E: >Nul 2>&1 If not ErrorLevel 1 Start E:... obviosly the code may be made more smart, but that is matter of style.