How to deal with Shortcuts and Deleted Files

I recently created an SVS Layer that included a shortcut pointing to an executable inside my layer. There is nothing strange about this, but for the purpose of a demo (to our director) I wanted to show how a user could delete an entire directory and have it restored simply by resetting a layer.

This is where the fun began. You delete the directory and attempt to use the shortcut. It shouldn't work...right? Wrong. Microsoft Windows has a great little technology for when you try to launch a shortcut and the file it refers to is missing. Windows searches for another executable with the same name. It also deletes the old shortcut and creates a new one with the same name. This means the shortcut is no longer part of the SVS layer.

After deleting the folder that the shortcut originally pointed to, my shortcut now pointed to a folder called "c:\fslrdr". This is the SVS redirection area where there is an executable with the same name. Even after deactivating the layer or resetting it, the shortcut pointing to the redirection area is still there instead of the shortcut that points to the correct folder and executable.

To prevent this from happening, you can keep the redirect area hidden from users. Many administrators might even prefer this functionality.

To hide the redirect area, open regedit and go to HKLM\SYSTEM\Altiris\FSL and create a new DWORD value named HideRedirectAreas and set the data value to 1. You will have to reboot the computer for this to take effect.

This will likely be fixed in upcoming updates, but it still might be useful to be able to hide the redirect area from users.

Screenbert