Making a Windows shortcut start relative to where the folder is

Question

I have a game that uses this file structure   GAME FOLDER - gt data - gt data- gt run bat   I want to put a shortcut to run bat in GAME FOLDER  but if I move it  or someone else installs it it won t work  because the target is wrong  Is there a way to make the target and  start in  relative to GAME FOLDER

User · Answer

According to Microsoft  if you leave the  Start In  box empty  the script will run in the current working directory  I ve tried this in Windows 7 and it appears to work just fine   Source  http   support microsoft com kb 283065

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Just a small improvement to leoj3n s solution  to make the console window disappear   instead of putting  windir  system32 cmd exe  c start      CD  bat bat run bat  to the Target  field of your Windows shortcut  you can also try adding only the following   windir  system32 cmd exe  c   CD  bat bat run bat  AND then also adding start in front of your commands in run bat  That will make the console window disappear  but everything else remains the same

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I like leoj3n s solution  It can also be used to set a relative  start in  directory  which is what I needed by using start s  D parameter  Without  c or  k in as an argument to cmd  the subsequent start command doesn t run   c will close the shell immediately after running the command and  k will keep it open  even after the command is done   So if whatever you re running spits to standard out and you need to see it  use  k   Unfortunately  according to the lnk file specification  the icon is not saved in the shortcut  but rather  encoded using environment variables  which makes it possible to find the icon across machines where the locations vary but are expressed using environment variables   So it s likely that if paths are changing and you re trying to take the icon from the executable you re pointing to  it won t transfer correctly

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Try using Relative  a Windows command-line application    Basically  a shortcut could have a relative link  but Windows gives no way to actually make one

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After making the shortcut as you have  set the following in Properties   Target   comspec   k  quot data run bat quot   Drop the  k if you don t want the prompt to stay open after you ve run it   Start In   cd  data

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I tried   dp0 in the Start in field and it is working fine in Windows 10 x64

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Right click on your  bat  folder and click Create Shortcut    On Windows 7 you will get bat - Shortcut in the current directory  On Windows XP you will get Shortcut to bat   Right click on the shortcut you just created and click Properties  Change Target  under the Shortcut tab on Windows 7  to the following    windir  system32 cmd exe  c start      CD  bat bat run bat   Make sure Start in is blank  That causes it to start in the current directory  Click OK  On Windows 7  the shortcut icon will change to the cmd exe icon   That s probably acceptable in the case of shortcutting to a  bat but if you want to change the icon  open the shortcut s properties again and click Change Icon     again  under the Shortcut tab on Windows 7   At this point you can Browse    for an icon or bring up a list of default system icons by entering   SystemRoot  system32 SHELL32 dll   to the left of the Browse    button and hitting Enter  This works on Windows 7 and Windows XP but the icons are different due to style updates  but are recognizably similar   Depending on the version of Windows the shortcut resides  the icon will will sometimes change accordingly    More Info   See Using the  quot start quot  command with parameters passed to the started program to better understand the empty double-quotes at the beginning of the first Target command

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The link with a relative path can be created using the mklink command on windows command line   mklink  d  MyDocs  Users User1 Documents   This might be the best way to create link because apparently  the behaviour of shortcut can be different perhaps based on the way they are created  UI vs mklink command   I observed some strange behavior with how the shortcuts behave when I change the root folder    There is a weird behaviour on Windows 7 that I tested  Sometimes the the link still just works when the root folder of target is changed  the shortcut properties automatically update to reflect the changed path    The  start in  field updates automatically as well if it was there  I also noticed that one link doesn t work the first time I change the root path  properties shows old  but it works after the 2nd and everytime after that  The link properties get updated as result of the first run  I also noticed at least for two link  it doesn t update the path and no longer works  From link properties  there is no difference in format of any fields yet the behaviour is different

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If you can set a system variable  something like  MyGameFolder    then you can use that in your paths and shortcuts  and Windows will fill in rest of the path for you  that is    MyGameFolder  data MyGame exe    Here is a small primer  You can either set this value via a batch file  or you can probably set it programmatically if you share how you re planning to create your shortcut

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The method that proposed by  leoj  does not allow passing parameters with spaces  Us it       cmd exe  v  c  CD  0 2   CD  2  bat bat run bat   Par1-1 Par1-2  Par2   Which will be similar double quote written as in path       C   Program Files anyProgram exe   Par1-1 Par1-2  Par2

User · Answer

Easiest Solution   Enviroment Variables handy little critters    If the other person is to install uncompress whatever to wherever on their respective system drive  usualy c     For demonstration purposes call our app  test exe   could be any executable file doesn t have to be exe  and it is to be installed uncompressed to folder MYCOMPANY MYAPP   Then just make a shortcut that uses   SystemDrive  MYCOMPANY MYAPP test exe    as target and   SystemDrive  MYCOMPANY MYAPP    as start in   So now you would like to deploy it  Using an app like  WinRAR    Easy way is using self-extraction zip file  neatly packaged as an   exe  I would use one for my shortcut and another for the app  There is ways to make one  self-extraction zip file that extracts different files to different directories  but i haven t played with it yet   Another way is to make a selfextract for the shorcut  embed it inside the selfextract for the app and then apply a run once script being that you know where the file is going to be   etc   If you want to enable the installer to use custom installation uncompress directories  then rather have a look at NSIS a scriptable install system   Play around it s fun  hope my info helped

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After reading several answers  I decided to do it with a simple solution  Instead of a shortcut  I made a  bat with only one line to call the main  bat and it works like I wanted

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I m not sure if I m right  or I m missing something  but as for now  2016-07-11  running Win7 Enterprise SP1  a LNK file adapts itself on moving or even changing the drive letter after it is run at a new place   I created a new shortcut on my USB drive and tried moving the shortcut and its target in a way that the relative position stayed unchanged  then I changed the drive letter  The shortcut worked in both cases and the target field was adapted after I double-clicked it   It looks like Microsoft has addressed this issue in one of the past updates   Please somebody confirm this

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You could have the batch file change the current working directory  CD

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You can make a relative shortcut manually by changing the file path  First in the usual context-menu you create a new shortcut of Windows for your file and in the properties -  location of your file     windir  explorer exe     data run bat

[windows] Making a Windows shortcut start relative to where the folder is?

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