Shortcut "Target" and "Start in" strings CHANGED?!
Hi-
I copied a customized Start Menu heirarchy from one XP Pro computer to another. And was I surprised to see the following change:
Original "Target"
"C:\Program Files\Commence\commence.ex
"Target" after copied to second computer
"\\Zd8000\c$\Program Files\Commence\commence.ex
The original computer's Name is ZD8000- However, WHAT is happening here? What causes it to change "C:\" to "\\zd8000\c$"?? I can see what it is trying to do - I just don't get HOW or WHY it is doing this.
Questions:
1) What mechanism is causing this to happen?
2) How can I prevent this - or
3) How can I globally replace "\\zd8000\c$" on the new computer for all occurences in the Start Menu path?
Supporting links explaining this would be appreciated.
With Regards-
Sam
I copied a customized Start Menu heirarchy from one XP Pro computer to another. And was I surprised to see the following change:
Original "Target"
"C:\Program Files\Commence\commence.ex
"Target" after copied to second computer
"\\Zd8000\c$\Program Files\Commence\commence.ex
The original computer's Name is ZD8000- However, WHAT is happening here? What causes it to change "C:\" to "\\zd8000\c$"?? I can see what it is trying to do - I just don't get HOW or WHY it is doing this.
Questions:
1) What mechanism is causing this to happen?
2) How can I prevent this - or
3) How can I globally replace "\\zd8000\c$" on the new computer for all occurences in the Start Menu path?
Supporting links explaining this would be appreciated.
With Regards-
Sam
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Thanks for the posts-
It strikes me as odd that the shortcut displays "C:\" instead of some environment variable in the shortcut. How am I supposed to know which shortcuts are not "hardcoded" to a specific location? I ask this because most of my shortcuts seem to be hardcoded (they came across to the other computer as "C:\"). So it seems that when creating shortcuts, there must be a CHOICE that I am unaware of for creating "hardcoded" shortcuts, or shortcuts that are setup for roaming?
I am in a workgroup and thought roaming is not an option outside of a domain environment - so this confuses me further.
oBdA: If I understood the Group Policy extended tab for "Do not track Shell shortcuts during roaming", it says that shortcuts "typically" contain the absolute path to the original target file as well as the relative path to the current target file. It is unclear to me which is which in my case - because it seems the strings displayed in the "Target" and "Start in" fields do not tell me this / differ from what is contained in the .lnk file (i.e. I cannot tell if that C: is hardcoded or is a reference to the orginal target file). Can you shed some more light on this for me?
It strikes me as odd that the shortcut displays "C:\" instead of some environment variable in the shortcut. How am I supposed to know which shortcuts are not "hardcoded" to a specific location? I ask this because most of my shortcuts seem to be hardcoded (they came across to the other computer as "C:\"). So it seems that when creating shortcuts, there must be a CHOICE that I am unaware of for creating "hardcoded" shortcuts, or shortcuts that are setup for roaming?
I am in a workgroup and thought roaming is not an option outside of a domain environment - so this confuses me further.
oBdA: If I understood the Group Policy extended tab for "Do not track Shell shortcuts during roaming", it says that shortcuts "typically" contain the absolute path to the original target file as well as the relative path to the current target file. It is unclear to me which is which in my case - because it seems the strings displayed in the "Target" and "Start in" fields do not tell me this / differ from what is contained in the .lnk file (i.e. I cannot tell if that C: is hardcoded or is a reference to the orginal target file). Can you shed some more light on this for me?
I'm afraid I can't shed any more light on this, I only know the general behaviour and what to do against it, but I never bothered to look into the details.
When copying shortcuts under XP, and the target exists locally, usually the local path is used; could it be that the application on the target machine is not where it was on the source machine?
When copying shortcuts under XP, and the target exists locally, usually the local path is used; could it be that the application on the target machine is not where it was on the source machine?
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C:\ I believe is hard coded in to the shortcut file. But I suspect that when you use Windows to move the shortcut to a network drive, Windows has to tell the network drive shortcut exactly where the file that the shortcut points to IS. & so it changes the path to point to the network share.
But rar the Start Menu, and there's no altering the shortcuts -- you get duplicates, instead of changed.
But rar the Start Menu, and there's no altering the shortcuts -- you get duplicates, instead of changed.
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Thanks everyone - much appreciated.
- Rar the files using www.rarlab.com. Then unrar to other computer.
- or xxcopy the files instead of using Windows Explorer er copy command which may change the shortcut properties to point to the ORIGINAL LOCATION (that's why you're getting the network path instead of C:\)