Comments on: How to create shortcuts with a relative path for use on USB drives

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:40:34 +0000

Sweet!! Worked for me. Thanks dude.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:35:06 +0000

UPDATE:

I found a better way to launch the application without a lingering command prompt. Format the .bat like this:

start “” Path\Program.exe

Run the .bat to make sure it works properly. When it does, use the Bat to Exe Converter to compile the .bat with the icon file as in the instructions in the original post. You could also skip this step and just use the .bat file as your shortcut if you don’t care about the icon. Sorry for the triple post.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:42:20 +0000

Correction: I recompiled the .exe using the “invisible application” option.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:31:43 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial. It is just what I was looking for. My experience:

When I compiled and ran the new .exe, it left an unnecessary command prompt open. To solve this, I recompiled the .exe using the “invisible application” application. This is found in the Options tab in the Visibility box.

Oddly, doing so slightly changed the behavior of the “User Account Control” window that pops up in Windows 7. The new behavior is slightly less favorable but I’m keeping it over the leftover command prompt window.

By: Samer

Samer — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:27:33 +0000

@ LouD: thanks for this. Great tip!

By: LouD

LouD — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:15:50 +0000

Give this variation a try:

This Batch-file is executed via a desktop shortcut AFTER a memory device is plugged into ANY available usb port.

It searches possible drive letter assignments IN REVERSE ORDER from Z to G
(excluding C D E & F) looking for the App (Bing.Bat) and executes it if it is found within that memory device on the specified path. The root directory In this case.

Batchfile:
FOR %%i in (Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G) DO (IF exist %%i:\BING.BAT %%i:\BING.BAT)

or:

Direct Command line:
FOR %i in (Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G) DO (IF exist %i:\BING.BAT %i:\BING.BAT)

About the icon:
Find and copy the App’s icon from its normal location and put in with existing icons or change where the desktop shortcut should look for it.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:00:23 +0000

Thank you very much

By: Abcd

Abcd — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:53:07 +0000

@Martin… try “”NetBeans\bin\netbeans.exe” “-console suppress”"

By: Martin Podbi

Martin Podbi — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:08:56 +0000

Hi,
This tutorial is great indeed. But I’ve got one question. How to run some program with additional parametrs. For example, I would like to have shortcut to “G:\NetBeans\bin\netbeans.exe” there is now trouble. But if i want run it with additional parameter “–console suppress” it won’t work. In my “bat” file I’ve placed the following: “NetBeans\bin\netbeans.exe –console suppress” and Windows command line won’t run it. It writes some message about don’t knowing if this is internal, or external program.
Can anyone help?

Thanks

By: Norville Cole

Norville Cole — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:52:24 +0000

Hi,
How do you include an option to change a init directory

I:\gns3\GNS3.exe –configdir I:\GNS3

Thanks
Norville

By: Eviler

Eviler — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:29:22 +0000

Very nice! Just what i was looking for! Thank you.

By: Samer

Samer — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:17:54 +0000

@ Drew: thank for sharing!

By: Drew

Drew — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:48:00 +0000

Shortcuts do support relative paths, but the wizard which creates them doesn’t.
So:
1. Create a shortcut as normal using the full path.
2. Edit the shortcut with a binary editor, such as Visual Studio Express (free)
2a. Some binary editors open the exe file the shortcut points to instead of the shortcut. To work around this, rename the file from xxx.lnk to xxx.bin, then open it again
3. Find the full path in the data, by doing a search
4. Copy the relative path over the full path
5. Find a 00 in the binary, copy it over first extra character in the full path
6. Save the file
6.a If you did 2a, rename the file back to .lnk
7. Run the shortcut – should work

By: wguru

wguru — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:21:51 +0000

Ref. fixing ‘rogue’ drive letter assigned shortcuts, my Googling the issue (Changing target path of windows shortcuts) resulted in one forum suggesting use of a powershell script file. However, someone there instead recommends that it might be better to use code to change all the shortcut’s to the drive letter of choice. So I’m currently awaiting that person’s kkindly afforded instruction/details.

By: Samer

Samer — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:01:30 +0000

wguru,
Don’t worry about the double posting. Its a problem with my host.

By: wguru

wguru — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:17:40 +0000

Wouldn’t purposely double post, but the initial try at posting seemed to fail as I was promted with something like, the server was unavailable, try back later. So I immiediatley back paged, re-wrote (but didn’t check to see if it previously poseted as I assumed it had, given the promt about ‘busy and try back later’).

By: wguru

wguru — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:57:44 +0000

Great stuff here, but is there a way to chnage a batch of shortcut (say all found in one folder) to another drive letter? I have some 6,000 shortcuts and half of them traget and start in the wrong drive letter (so they don;t work and I would have to manually change 3,000 shortcut proerties if no other means to fix this). Again all 6,000 are on one drive, but due to Windows annoyingly changing EHD drive letters simple minded by the drive’s introduction to the pc, I ended up not noticing the drive letter didn;t match the other 3000 shortcuts.

By: Troy K

Troy K — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:40:45 +0000

You can do it with a shortcut…
%windir%\explorer.exe /e,..\..\..\..\My folder

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:16:19 +0000

This worked great. One thing to note: your quotation marks as-is are not formatted correctly, so it initially was not working for me. After I replaced the “curly” quotations with standard “straight” ones, it worked immediately.

Thanks!

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:21:20 +0000

To get rid of the black window choose the invisible optiopn.