Reroute where programs write to

Hey, i'm in college and i work in the pc lab, but i have some long breaks between classes and from when class ends til i have to work. The school has a policy with the computers that you can't modify them by installing software, etc. so i install whatever programs i may want to use to my flash drive, such as AIM, firefox, and Dev-C++. the only problem i have, is these programs want to write data to the C: drive and whenever the computers reboot, a network image is restored so anything saved to the hard drive dies. So i was wondering how difficult it would be to write a program that would catch these other programs trying to write to the hard drive and reroute it so itd write to the same folder location on my flash drive. So when i install a plugin for firefox, instead of it going to application data in my doc's on the C drive, itd go to application data in my doc's on my flash drive.
:) thanks

Well, for things like your Application Data folder, there's actually an environment variable called APPDATA for it. If you overrode it to point to your flash drive, that should accomplish what you're looking for.

and to do this i would...

? lol :) thanks

Open a dos prompt, and type 'help set'. That should get you started.

gotcha.

so if i wanted it automated for everytime i put my flash drive in the pc, i'd just create a batch file on it to set the variable and run that before doing anything..?

Yep.

easy enough.

appdata.bat

Code:

---

@echo off
set APPDATA=F:\Documents and Settings\Tim\Application Data
exit

---

:)

mm...it doesn't appear to be working.