Change disk type

[saywell]

I have a program that will only run from a removable disk.
I need it to run from a folder on the hard drive.

I can create a subst drive [dos], but it appears as local.  Is it possible to change the type it displays to removable, so my app will run from it?

Thanks,

William

[Spoiler]

You ever try a USB drive?

What program is this?

[saywell]

Its a medical image viewer.  It is designed to present x-ray [etc] images from a CD, but I am encrypting these images on the CD, and unencrypting them to a hard drive folder.  Unfortunately, once they are there, the viewer won't work.

It will from a usb drive, but the recipients of the CDs may not be allowed removable media on their PCs, or have one available - it's just too complicated.

So I want to try to fool the viewer into running off the folder into which the images have been decrypted.

Most will run from a dos-subst to make the folder look like a root drive, but this particular one obviously checks the drive type, rather than the root/folder structure.

Regards,

William

[Geek-9pm]

I have a program that will only run from a removable disk.
I need it to run from a folder on the hard drive.

May I  ask why you need this?
Is this on a large scale? In a single building or campus?
Is the a privacy or copyright issue in this?
There is a work around.
 But our concern is why the program vendor does not let you use it in the way that bet suits your needs.

[saywell]

The situation is this:

Radiology images stored on PACS [picture archiving and communications system] need to be transfered to somewhere else for a doctor to review - perhaps images taken while patient on holiday etc.

PACS vendors provide the facility to burn the images onto a CD, along with a viewer to allow the recipient doctor to look at the images on his office PC [for full diagnostic purposes, the images will be imported from the CD to the PACS at the receiving hospital].

Due to some spectacular data losses in UK, we now have to encrypt all the CDs used for this.

None of the PACS vendors currently supplying the NHS in UK have a facility to burn an encrypted CD directly from the PACS workstation, so I have written some scripts that take the files destined for the CD [including the viewer], encrypt them, and add a menu program to the CD that runs the decryption [using 7-zip].  The decrypted files are placed in a folder on the hard drive of the recipient, and the whole folder is deleted [including the images AND the viewer] when the viewer is closed or the menu shut down.

Most of the viewers will run from the folder, though one needs to be in the root of a drive, so can use DOS Sust command to do this.

The one I'm currently working on will only run from a removable drive.  Whilst I appreciate that the vendor doesn't want his viewer stolen and used for other purposes, in the scenario above it is only being used to view the images from the CD [as the vendor intends] anf the hard drive copy is deleted when viewing is complete - so I feel I'm keeping within the spirit of the original usage intentions.

I have considered a virtual drive, but can't find one that doesn't need software to be installed on the recipients' PCs - which is too intrusive, and at many hospitals is blocked by security policies [quite rightly].

Truecrypt can produce a virtual drive effect, but its use is not practical - mainly because there is no provision to craete a truecrypt vault from the command line, and also because it is incredibly slow, and users will abandon the attempt.

I hope this explanation allays your concerns, and if you can suggest any way round my problem, I'd be grateful [as would the administrators who have to breach rules and send CDs unencrypted, and any patients whose CDs might go astray!

Regards,

William