As far as I know all a path does is allows EXE's to run without having to enter the full directory path to the executable.
Isn’t this as simple as finding out what now doesn’t work, then adding the path variable. C:\mydir\myapp\myapp.exe Add c:\mydir to your path? And most apps will be in %programfiles% in any case. Gavin Wilby IT Support Engineer -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Leone Sent: 20 November 2015 13:39 To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] Where is the "path" variable stored, need to restore just that I had the strangest restore request I've ever gotten. Somehow, one of my developers screwed up the "path" on one of our servers, and now (they say) the "path" is empty. And that is causing problems (we use PeopleSoft, which apparently needs to find things through the path, as many applications do (or did)). No, I have no idea how they did that. Or why (well, I do know why - they thought they were fixing some problem or other. But they just made things exponentially worse) But now, if I go to that Win2008 R2 VM, and bring up a command prompt, the "path" just shows as "C;\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin". And nothing else. I recommended going through the list of installed program locations, and adding those to the path. This was rejected. They think they might miss something that way ... Where exactly is the path stored? Used to be, it was in the autoexec.bat. And so I could restore an earlier version of that file, and fix it from that. But that doesn't exist anymore, right? Isn't the path constructed from the registry on boot these days? From here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment What I don't want to do: Perform a full BMR restore to a new VM (I don't want to take a chance with screwing up the current VM, even as crippled as it is); boot the new VM (presuming that it boots); read the path from there. (we use EMC Networker for backup, BTW) I don't think it's possible to restore just a specific hive from a registry, and then read it, correct? I'd need to restore the whole VM. How would I even set the path, once I did know it? I know how to set it via a GUI, after logging in as a specific user. But will that set it for every user who logs in to the server? It should, right? SMP Partners Limited, SMP Trustees Limited and SMP Fund Services Limited are licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority. SMP Accounting & Tax Limited is a member of the ICAEW Practice Assurance Scheme. SMP Partners Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 000908V Directors: M.W. Denton, M.J. Derbyshire, S.E McGowan, O. Peck, J.J. Scott, S.J. Turner SMP Trustees Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 068396C Directors: A.C. Baggesen, J.M. Cubbon, M.W. Denton, K.M. Goldie, O Peck, J. Watterson SMP Fund Services Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 120288C Directors: V. Campbell, R.K. Corkhill, M.W. Denton, D.A. Manser, S.E McGowan, J.J. Scott SMP Accounting & Tax Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 001316V Directors: I.F. Begley, A.J. Dowling, P. Duchars, J.J. Scott, S.J. Turner SMP Capital Markets Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 002438V Directors: M.W. Denton, M.J. Derbyshire, D.F Hudson, S.E McGowan, O. Peck. SMP Partners Limited, SMP Trustees Limited, SMP Fund Services Limited, SMP Accounting & Tax Limited and SMP Capital Markets Limited are members of the SMP Partners Group of Companies. This email is confidential and is subject to disclaimers. Details can be found at: http://www.smppartners.com/disclaimer.asp ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com ______________________________________________________________________
