Ray said:
Working in a small school and working with some uncooperative
software...
The software is KidPix.
It insists on keeping user data in "C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Application Data\The Learning Company\Kid Pix"
is there ANY way to creating some sort of maping to a server drive (or
for that matter, just to the my documents folder for the current user)
so the application will be happy and I can retain my sanity?
The problem is due to our using SteadyState with drive protection on.
If someone can find me a reliable way of spoofing the system I would
be eternally grateful!
Thank you very much!
Ray
Move the "The Learning Company" folder to wherever you want. Create a
junction under "Application Data" called "The Learning Company" that
point to wherever you moved the original folder. Programs that go to
....\All Users\Application Data\The Learning Company\... will actually be
redirected by the junction point to wherever you have it connect to the
folder that you moved (which needs to be outside the partition that is
being protected by SteadyState).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point
Redenwonder makes a handy Junction Link Magic utility for creating
junction points (
http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm). There are
several other 3rd party utilities to create junction points. I've used
Bitsum's ProcessLasso utility to manage process priorities under Windows
how I want them. They have their junction utility but I've never used
it (
http://www.bitsum.com/shjunc.asp). It might be easier to understand
but warns it is in alpha status. SysInternals, long known for essential
Windows tools, has its junction utility but works only from the command
line. Microsoft doesn't provide junction point (or reparse point)
utilities except in their Resource Kits. Just remember you are creating
a *virtual* folder (the junction point) where the program is looking,
and the real folder is off somewhere else to which the junction points.
Obviously you need to save this junction definition in the base state
for SteadyState so it doesn't disappear when you restore back to that
base state.
Junction points are a feature of NTFS so you must be using NTFS in the
file system where you want to define the junction point.
Be careful of any backup software. Some will follow junctions while
some do not. If your backup software follows a junction point, you
could end up backing that data up twice: once when following the
junction and again when you backup its real location.
