I have a program that came with a school textbook that auto plays, I was curious if there was a way to install it instead of having to use the disc? There are no install instructions.
I believe they do that as copyright protection. You can try exploring the disc files (different commands on mac or pc) and finding an install.exe/install.dmg (pc/mac).
Create a new folder somewhere, let's say C:\Users\you\desktop\CD Copy\ Click Start, then click Computer (or My Computer in older versions of Windows). Right-click on the CD or DVD drive with the disk in it, and click explore. Press Ctrl+A to select all files, then Ctrl+C to copy them to the clipboard. Open your new CD Copy folder that you created earlier, then press Ctrl+V to paste copies of the files. Once all the files are copied to the new folder, find a file in CD Copy that is called autorun.inf. Right click on it, click 'Open With' and choose Notepad (C:\windows\system32\notepad.exe). In this file, it will show the name of the actual file that runs automatically when the disk autoruns. Find that file, double-click on it, and see if it works. If it doesn't, it is probably due to copy protection and there is a plan B for that.