Portable Shortcuts on Windows

Question

I can't figure out how to create shortcuts that don't care where they are mounted. For example, on my flash drive, I want to run CCleaner or Notepad++ in my college classroom. The problem is, a shortcut (at least with default settings) doesn't work reliably because it is tied to the same drive it was created on. Is there a way to do something like in HTML?

Example:

Here is where the actual program is:

Root\Portable Applications\Program Data\CCleaner\ccleaner.exe

Here is where I want the shortcut to be:

Root\Portable Applications\CCleaner.lnk

U3/Portable Apps/etc is not the solution I am looking for

Edit: The Versions of Windows will be XP 32 bit, Vista 64 bit, and Vista 32 bit

Answer 1

You can use mklink if on Vista or later to create symbolic links. They can be pointed to wherever you want. Alternatively a batch file as pointed out by pelms would work as well.

Answer 2

Instead of using a shortcut you could create a batch file that uses a root relative path to the exe file.
e.g. for your example

@start "" "\Portable Applications\Program Data\CCleaner\ccleaner.exe"

The batch file should then work from anywhere on the USB drive, whatever the drive letter.

Answer 3

Ok thank you guys for your replies. Here is what I ended up doing for any interested. pelms idea to use a batch file is almost it. (A Very good idea, thank you pelms) What I did was just make an AutoIt script that runs the apps in directories below it. Then I just compiled it with an extracted .ico from each executable file so everything looked pretty. Thanks again John and pelmsd

Run ('Program Data\PDF X-Change\PDFXCview.exe')

That is all the script consists of. Thanks again guys, I have linked the two programs I used if anyone is interested

AutoIt

IcoFX

Answer 4

You can put the following in the shortcut Target:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "start ./foo.bar"

However the Icon will be the cmd icon.