How to have file/folder icons use a relative path?

Question

On my portable hard drive I set icons for almost every organized folder. All these icons are located in an Icons folder located on the root directory of the same hard drive.

When I change the drive letter of the hard drive (well I don't, Windows does it automatically sometimes) these icons are lost. So far this hard disk drive is assigned to F:.

While it's not a problem now, it may become a problem if I upgrade my computer or get a new one and the F: drive is already taken up for something else. It's also annoying on networks where F: is mapped to a network drive.

Answer 1

I found out where I can do it, though I've only done it on Windows XP. It'll probably work on any other version of Windows after that.

You first need to show both Hidden Files and System Protected Files. When you assign an icon to a folder a desktop.ini file in that folder, under [.ShellClassInfo] you will have a key called IconFile. Just change the path of the icon so instead of having something like F:\Icons\Anime\Code Geass\Nunnally\Nunnally1.ico or %SystemDrive%\Aura\Icons\Anime\Akiza.ico, you have a path that's relative to that folder, like putting ..\ until you get back to the root directory and then putting in the path from there. That way you're not using driver letter or system variables which may be different between computers.