OT: Totally non-obvious CD/DVD workaround (Windows)

[Fairlight]

I figured this out, and while it seems obvious in retrospect, it was borne
of desperation.

I got a clip art collection.  100,000 images on DVD.  Except it has a
browser and no matter -how- you tweak the registry settings for it, it
-requires- it to find its stuff on the root of a drive, even if you specify
a full path in the registry.  If I said C:\The100kImages in the registry,
it still wanted C:\ClipArt when I went to grab an image from the browser.
It would honour the metadata part but not the image part.

I mean, the whole point here is that just because I'm whipping up a
document and need an image, I don't want to have to eject my game disc du
jeur just to get it, then swap back later.  I bought the images, I should
be able to access them from my HD if I'm willing to eat the space.

Soooooo...  After I got done dinking the registry, I said bugger that not
working, and sat for a moment and thought.  

Then I came up with this solution:

1) Put the directory on a shared drive.
2) Map a drive letter directly to that directory.
3) Install -from- that directory so the browser knows it's configured to
that drive letter.

Example:

1) Make c:\The100kImages as a folder, knowing that C: is a shared drive.
2) Map X: to \\arcadia\c\The100kImages from My Network Places
3) Go to My Computer, go to drive X: and run setup.exe to install.
4) Use away!

Worked like a charm.  Substitute drive letters to taste.

I knew there had to be a way.  It seemed counterintuitive to map a drive
letter to a -local- folder, but since it's running through a share name, it
does exactly what I want because it treats it as a network resource.  Since
it seemed -so- counterintuitive to me, I decided to share it just in case
others hadn't thought of it.

Anyone that ever wanted to pull off behaviour like having your CD material
locally without having another device, there you go...

mark->