Question

How do I force a Windows program to access a file in an alternate location, other than the one that the program was hard coded to use?

Asked by: SYSENG2007

I am in the process of rolling out Thin Clients that will be connecting to a Citrix Server running on Windows Server 2003.  The core application that the Thin Client users will be accessing on the Citrix Servers is a product called Symitar.  Symitar is a banking application.  The Thin Clients are XP Embedded and have Topaz USB Signature Pads attached to them.  The Signature pads are used when transactions are completed.  USB Sig Pads are not natively supported in Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server 4.5   However, Topaz has created a program that runs on the server that will allow the information form the Sig pad to be transferred to the Terminal Server Session.  This works great with the testing application that Topaz supplies for testing the Sig pad functionality.  The testing application uses an ini file that is stored in the users profile\windows directory (sigplus.ini).  This file is unique to each user, thus creating a separate sigsock session for the signature pad information to be transferred to user's terminal server session.  This works very well!

Here is the issue:  The core application that we need to use the Signature Pads with also uses the Sigplus.ini file.  However, the application will only look in c:\windows\ for the Sigplus.ini.  This is an issue because this sigplus.ini file needs to be unique and is not.  Because of this, the core application used the same same file for everyone and the signature pads to not work.

The vendor will not change the location where program accesses the sigplus.ini.

I have tried using a variable (%username%) in the ini file, but the program does not treat %username% as a variable.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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Asked On
2009-11-02 at 07:10:48ID24863841
Tags

ini

,

windows

,

variable

,

alternate

,

location

,

terminal server

,

citrix

,

sigsock

,

topaz

,

symitar

,

xp embedded

Topics

Microsoft Operating Systems

,

Server Applications

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: DLWoodiePosted on 2009-11-02 at 07:48:33ID: 25720418

This is just an daft idea and completely untested......

how about replacing the c:\windows\sigplus.ini with a shortcut called sigplus.ini, point the shortcut to the SigPlus.ini file the the %UserName% location or home folder etc.

The system will obviously remane your sigplus.ini file with a lnk file extension but by calling it sigplus.ini.lnk this may be enough to fool the system.

 

by: wdurrettPosted on 2009-11-02 at 09:12:20ID: 25721268

Did you take a look in the registry for the key that points to sigplus.ini?  I bet there is an entry that tells it to look in the windows directory.  They changing that key - %username% will work in the registry.

 

by: oBdAPosted on 2009-11-02 at 10:10:29ID: 25721872

That seems to be a programming error that needs to be corrected by the vendor. They do not seem to be using the GetWindowsDirectory API to retrieve the Windows directory, which would return the path to the ini file in the user's home folder (as it happens in the testing application).
Details are here, maybe you can convince them to change their program:

Terminal Server application integration information
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186498

GetWindowsDirectory Function
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724454(VS.85).aspx

Program compatibility flags
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc787360(WS.10).aspx

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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