Recently users of our VB6 app have encountered problems when trying to read files.
It surfaced that the Dir function throws an error for non-existing shares instead of returning an empty string.
My hunch is that previously the App.Path function returned "C:\Program Files\OurApp\ourapp.exe" but now it returns "\\MyComputer\C$\Program Files\OurApp\ourapp.exe". The Dir function raises an error if \\MyComputer\ does not exist.
Has anyone an idea when or how this undesirable behaviour is generated?
The shortcut your users start your app is pointing to \\MyComputer\C$r\... which explains why App.Path is in UNC notation.
Who turned the shortcut in UNC?
Ususally when an admin browses \\MyComputer\C$ and finds a shortcut in \\MyComputer\C$\Document and Settings\User\Desktop or similar and start it, the shortcut automagically is reconciled not to point to local drive C: but to \\MyComputer\C$. Later local users being local admins don't find anything wrong such shortcuts and so on...