Maybe this won't work for you but have you looked into the FOXPROCFG environment variable, and the -CPath\ConfigFileName command line parameter?

>Our application works off of settings stored in foxpro tables, like most VFP frameworks do. When we designed this functionality five years ago, the solution we used was using a shortcut (.lnk) file because we can specify the Target and Start In (which can be pointing to a different server) properties which are very integral to our application in finding the settings when it boots up.
>
>>Maybe I'm missing something but why do you need a shortcut to run VFP EXE from within of other VFP application?
>>
>>>

>>>Windows 2003 Server SP1
>>>Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-049
>>>Vulnerabilities in Windows Shell Could Allow Remote Code Execution (900725)
>>>

>>>
>>>This is the scenario we're in.
>>>1. We have a scheduler application (VFP7) that polls every 15 seconds for an entry in an Oracle table.
>>>2. For a given entry in the Oracle table, the scheduler app runs our other application (VFP8) using a predefined shortcut file (.lnk) using the ShellExec() Windows API function.
>>>3. We have been running this for several years on Windows NT4 up to Windows 2000 servers.
>>>
>>>Now that we implement this environment on a Windows 2003 Server SP1 server the security update above, the OS no longer allows the ShellExec() call. There is no entry logged in any of the three Server Event logs as to why the ShellExec() request was not ran. It seems that the OS just throws away the ShellExec() request but not if I use the Exe name. Meaning:
>>>
>>>- ShellExec('ShortcutToOurApp.lnk') && does not work
>>>- ShellExec('OurApp.Exe') && WORKS!
>>>
>>>Short of unistalling the Security Update, is there any other way around this without changing existing codes? Can the registry keys be tweaked?