Shortcuts (etc.) keep switching to a network location

I notice that the icon pictures of some of my desktop shortcuts keep disappearing, changing to the default. When I look at the shortcut properties, I see that it has changed from something like this (correct)

X:\X-Plane\CustomData\...

to this (wrong):

\\Martin-fspc\x\X-Plane\CustomData\...

Seems to happen all by itself. If it is my doing, then maybe someone could say what it might be, as I do not access these shortcuts via a network, though I do have other PCs on my home network.

Today noticed that some functions in that X-Plane installation had stopped working. The XP11 log text, sure enough, showed this:

Loaded: //Martin-fspc/x/X-Plane/...

So plugins within X-Plane also suddenly think that the programme is on a network drive! Why would this be, all of a sudden (it pointed to the correct local drive yesterday)? I rebooted and restarted X-Plane and this time the log showed:

Loaded: X:/X-Plane/...

which is as it should be.

Any suggestions as how I can stop this happening would be appreciated! I tried making the desktop icons read-only (not sure if that worked), but I am more concerned about programmes suddenly thinking they're on a network drive and so stuff stops working!

Thanks,

Martin

Hi Martin,

possibly because, if im reading it right - you have an partition labeled "X"

you should not use "x" its a default drive within the OS, used by Safe mode.

Roy

Any other ideas? It would be a real pain for me to have to change the drive letter from X to something else, if that is proved to be the issue; too much stuff would stop working. Could that really be the reason I have these problems? As I say, desktop shortcuts to other drives can also suddenly change their target from, say, D:/Backup/a.exe to //martin-fspc/d/backup/a.exe, so I kind of doubt it.

How could that happen? I am not touching the shortcut, dragging it to another location or whatever. The target just seems to change as if by 'magic'. I have tried making such links read-only, but even if that helps, it would be good to know what is changing the targets and why, not least so that I can prevent it, but also for the satisfaction of solving a mystery! Thanks.

Is the name of your computer martin-fspc? If that is your computer's name, then this is simply the network way of referring to your local drive. In other words, although it is aggravating, it should still work. But apparently it isn't working, or you wouldn't be here asking about how to fix it.

Did you use SUBST to map a drive to that folder? If so, did you do the mapping with the entire network-format name? For example, did you issue this command: SUBST X: //Martin-fspc/x/X-Plane/... If you did the SUBST in that way, then maybe this is a quirk with SUBST, because SUBST isn't truly a network drive mapping program, but rather a local drive mapping program.

Hi Martin,

Im wondering if this is also related to your Macrium failures...
Does the shortcut work until you run Macrium
@SIW2

Does Macrium use WinRe/Pe in some way, ie drive X.

Roy

Is the name of your computer martin-fspc?

Yes

Im wondering if this is also related to your Macrium failures...

Well spotted, but this is a different computer from the one with image restore problems

Certain programmes will not work when they believe they are retrieving information across a network (some plugins for X-Plane 11, for example). The information has to be on the local machine (which it is, of course).

Did you use SUBST to map a drive to that folder?

I haven't mapped any drives in any way on the PC in question. The PC is part of a home network, to which two other PCs belong. But I can't see how they can be interfering - I never access either the programme shortcuts or the programmes directly from a different PC.

Thanks for the suggestions. More are very welcome. :)

Any other ideas as to why some desktop icons keep switching to a network location? If it is something I am inadvertently doing (??) I could at least stop doing it, but it seems to happen without any input from me at all. (Since making the shortcuts Read-Only, there has been no change in the target, but it's too soon to say that that has fixed things).