You can either place a shortcut to your application in the Startup directory, or you can write the path of your file to the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
Option 1:
If you want to use the shortcut method, on the Files tab of the Edit Installer dialog, make sure you have the [Start>>Programs] in the tree, then create a subdirectory "Startup" underneath it. Now on the Shortcuts tab, "[Start>>Programs]\Startup" will appear in the ring for the shortcut destination directory. If you create a shortcut to your application in this directory, it will be run when the computer starts up.
Option 2:
From the Registry Keys tab, you can build the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run by repeatedly selecting New Key from the right-click menu of the registry tree. Then highlight the Run key and select "New Value" from the right-click menu of the value table on the right. You can change the name of this value to whatever you want (preferably the name of your application), but you must set the value to the
installed path of the file you want to launch. You can't use a simple hardcoded path, because you (usually) don't know what the filesystem of the target machine will look like, but the distribution builder provides a few handy symbolic names which are expanded at install time. If you wish to run your program my_app.exe, which you install to the application directory (shown in bold in the Files tab), you should set the registry key value to "%dest\my_app.exe". Make sure you do put quotes around the path, or it's likely not to work.
If you have any trouble, let me know.
Mert A.
National Instruments
