My Start Menu and Favorites Menu are CUSTOM with special folder icons for
all. I have shareware program called Change Folder Icons
(http://www.nesoft.org). It lets you customize folders in 4 ways. To make
them permanent & portable, it places both an icon and a desktop.ini file as
hidden files inside each folder. This lets me use the same Favorites menu on
all my computers or burn them that way on to a CD.

To make a folder with a special icon permanent & portable, two hidden files
must be placed in the folder and copied with the folder. The number of the
icon file changes with each icon, but you get the idea. This is one way I
can get around the shortcut portability problem.

CUSTOM FOLDER #1
desktop.ini (62 bytes, space on disk 4kb)
$cfi-3775330339.ico (158kb)

CUSTOM FOLDER #2
desktop.ini (62 bytes, space on disk 4kb)
$cfi-2085131845.ico (8.84kb)

This is different from the way Windows usually customizes folder icons
(desktop.ini file only without the icon file, and those types of custom
icons are not portable). So in my case, this special stuff DOES take up
extra space. Hidden is an attribute, and each desktop.ini file is around 65
bytes but takes up 4kb size on disk. Some of the icons are small (8-30k) but
others are large (166k). If my favorites were normal shortcuts without the
desktop.ini files and the special folder icons, they would take up less
space.

I'd still like to find a workable solution for my original QUESTION #2. For
drive D, E, F, L, M, or N (anything but C because C is the system drive and
no data files are on it) I'd like to be able to place ONE file in one folder
(without having to copy the file multiple times to other folders). Then
place shortcuts in other locations on the drive or CD to point to that one
file. But to do that, I need syntax that refers to that drive regardless of
what the drive letter is, since the drive letter may change. So far, I do
not know how to do that. Let's say I want to create a folder on a data drive
or CD. All 3 programs use the same manual, but I don't want to copy the
manual 3 times on the hard drive or the CD-R/RW. I want to put the manual
there only once, and have shortcuts to point it from the other places.

Program #1
Program #2
Program #3
Manual

I hope there is a way to do this. This would eliminate a lot of duplication
and would let me delete my duplicate files and recover LOADS of disk space.
Windows Vista is supposed to eliminate this problem, but there must be a
solution for creating "smart" portable shortcuts in Windows 9x-XP.


"David Candy" <.> wrote in message
news:uvsZYTizFHA.3856@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
But small files, a 1 byte file without special attributes qualifies, is
stored in the MFT. Therefore it takes up the same space as a 0 byte file -
1kb in the MFT. You can find where a file is stored by using Perfect Disk's
View menu - Find File feature. Even larger files such as boot.ini are stored
in the MFT. So are all my favourites.

So why would you then say you should delete your favourites WHEN THEY ARE
TAKING UP NO EXTRA DISK SPACE than if they were deleted (although this is
only 99% of the time) as the MFT (99% of the time) storage is already
allocated.
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"SeaMaid" <seamaid24-graphics@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OklEpJizFHA.596@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> If there is a particular thing I should read, what is it?
>
>
> "David Candy" <.> wrote in message
> news:%232%235hChzFHA.720@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> You should try reading as you are just wrong.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/...nt/001075.html
> =================================================
> "SeaMaid" <seamaid24-graphics@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ePMwc%23gzFHA.1132@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>> QUESTION 1
>>
>> Thanks for that great answer! I may need to eliminate duplicate shortcuts
>> on
>> the Start Menu and Favorites menu. I also have several custom folders
>> with
>> special icons and accompanying desktop.ini files. Each of the icons and
>> the
>> desktop.ini files takes a minimum of 4kb, so I may want to rethink having
>> so
>> many colored and custom folders.
>>
>> QUESTION 2
>>
>> %HOMEDRIVE% and %SYSTEMDRIVE% both point to the C drive. That would not
>> work
>> on the D drive and other drives, which is what I'm looking for.
>>
>> %HOMEPATH% would not work. It points to C:\Documents and
>> Settings\[UserProfile]
>>
>>
>> "Wesley Vogel" <123WVogel955@comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:OXSmdQczFHA.664@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
>>> QUESTION #2
>>> Try
>>> %HOMEDRIVE% The user's home directory's drive letter.
>>> %homepath% The path to the user's home directory.
>>> %SystemDrive% The drive containing the Windows XP root directory.
>>>
>>> Type %HOMEDRIVE% into Start | Run to see what opens.
>>> Type %homepath% into Start | Run to see what opens.
>>> Type %SystemDrive% into Start | Run to see what opens.
>>
>>
>
>