Standalone software question

I have downloaded some nice standalone software from here, mainly E-mail checker and Portable Firefox. I use these whenever I am working on a clients computer. What I do is I have some folders created on my flash drive to help me stay organized. I have one folder called Programs, which is located about 3 folders deep. I created shortcuts on the root of my flash drive, that points to E-mail checker and portable Firefox. I created those shortcuts on my machine, where the flash drive happens to be the "F" drive. When I go to other places, its normally the "E" drive, but I have seen it as many other drives. Is there a way I can put a wildcard switch on my shortcut that will always point to my flash drive no matter what drive letter it takes on? Or is there a way I can make my flash drive a certain letter on any machine?

 

I'm sure there is a better method, but you could try the following:

Create a .bat file that points to the file in question.

I.E.
Just name it as programname.bat

.\directory1\directory2\directory3\programname.exe

Then just run the bat file, to bring up your programs.

 

Thanks for your idea, but I just tried that, it doesn't work. Anyone else have any idea's/suggestions?

 

Sounds like you want the abilty to use relative paths in shortcuts instead of absolute. I've never come across a way to do this so I did a little googling and it seems it isn't possible on windws but there are a couple of solutions..

I found this link,

http://www.1way.ws/MyDrive.html

 

ooh I just had a nice idea.... HTML will allow relative links, why not write a webpage with links to the files (this will work since html CAN have relative links) and store it in the root of your removable media..

and then just open the web page and you can click to run any program....


The other option is to write some form of browser using your prefered programming language and autorun it, in much the same manner as the cds you get on the covers of magazines...

 

I appreciate all you guys for trying to help me out. I finally found something that will help me out, and I know it might help some of you out there too. I found Portable Apps. They basically have a bunch of nice programs that run off a flash drive. They have a suite which has essentially all the programs that you might need - all with their own U3 like menu.

There is also another menu program like that - just the menu - no other apps, and you can manually add any app to it. It's called PStart.

There are ways to make the USB autorun as well. Here are a few links. I haven't tried them tho:

http://www.simtel.net/product.php[id]84921[SiteID]filebasket
http://www.archidune.com/apo/
http://www.blackbit.net/frameset.html
http://www.usbsoftware.co.uk/products.html
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/top/hack-attack-quicklaunch-your-usb-workspace-182792.php

It might be worth making this topic Sticky? <-- just a thought