Hi Tom.

I don't know if this helps, but we distribute a vertical market app where we have absolutely no control over how the user is going to arrange the app and it's supporting tables. The application uses at least three different folders, that can be located on local drives, LAN drives or even drives that are accessed via a dial-up WAN.

The user can specify their location. This information is saved to the user's registry. When the app starts, it reads in these locations from the registry and stores the paths to properties of the application object. Should the app be unable to find any of it's required files or its database (or if there are no registry entries for this information), it prompts the user for this information. This comes in handy when some Larry Lightbulb decides to remap his drives *bg*. It also allows each workstation to map drives independently, with no requirement that the user place the free tables and database in specific locations in relation to the app.