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shortcuts and "start on" is null

Posted: 07 Dec 2006, 23:35
by alvalongo
Hi:

When I use a lot of shortcuts and they have the "start on" field withs string.
In "Windows Explorer" this means that the current directory is where the shortcut is on.

But Servant Salamander doesn't do in this way.
It takes the path on the "destiny" field as the "start on" directory.

Bye

Alvalongo
from Bogota, Colombia (South America)

Re: shortcuts and "start on" is null

Posted: 08 Dec 2006, 12:05
by SvA
alvalongo wrote:
When I use a lot of shortcuts and they have the "start on" field withs string.
I don't realy understand what this means. I assume you ment to leave the "Start In" field empty.

In this case, you are mistaken. Windows does not use the LNK file's directory as the working directory, but uses the current working directory. Of course, in Windows Explorer, your current working directory is changed to the location where the link resides, whenever you doubleclick the link. However, if you drag a file onto it, Explorer sems to use it's own working dir (the one explorer.exe uses) or maybe your home path %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% or %USERPROFILE% respectively, which happenes to be the same on my system. When you start such a link from a program the program the link points to will run in the working directory the launching program determines. E.g if you start the link using start from a commandline like this:

Code: Select all

start "myLink" /DC:\ "%userprofile%\desktop\MyLink.LNK"
your program will start in C:\.

I agree, though, that Salamander does it differently, as you said.

I think, Altap should change this. Whether Microsoft's solution to use the homedir for drag'n'drop operations is briliant is debatable in my opinion. It should, however, probably be a writeable directory, and program install dir's should generally not tulf ll tis requirement.