Windows XP environment variable for “local setting” folder

Question

There's an environment variable, %appdata%, equal to

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\.

Is there a variable for either

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\

or C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\

?

Answer 1

For temporary changes you can use set command that can be used in scripts or in the command window.

More permanent changes can be made via the System properties dialog box by doing right-click on My Computer -> Properties and in the Advanced tab select Environment Variables. From there you can create new path variables to use.

There are also other ways to accomplish this task, see more info here

Answer 2

There isn't such a variable on legacy Windows versions. However, you can get the folder path through VBScript:

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
WScript.Echo objShell.Namespace(&H1c&).Self.Path

You can then use this in a batch file as follows:

for /f "delims=" %%i in ('cscript /nologo localappdata.vbs') DO (
  set LOCALAPPDATA=%%i
)

On current versions of Windows this variable (%LOCALAPPDATA%) exists by default.

Answer 3

This is very cryptical, but it works with standard Windows XP commands:

for /f "tokens=4,5 delims=\" %a in ('reg query "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders" /v "Local AppData"^|find "REG_SZ"') do set LocalAppData=%userprofile%\%a\%b

... and it is language independent (use %%a and %%b instead of %a and %b inside batch files).

Answer 4

There isn't one by default, though you can type set into a command prompt to see a list of all environment variables on your system.

An alternative for you is to use %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings and %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data or set your own environment variables with the set command.

Answer 5

Just use %appdata% windows xp --

and use the explorer window up-arrow to nav to the users directory, then select local settings.

takes a split second or two. easy.