Sticky

Sticky is a Windows service that automatically mounts virtual hard disk files when started. Although Windows offers the possibility to attach virtual hard disks natively, it does not offer a way to have them attached on user startup. Adding virtual hard disk files (or shortcuts) to a user's startup folder is finicky and doesn't work well, depending on your User Account Control (UAC) settings.

This program solves this issue by allowing you to register it as a system service that starts with the system.

Sticky is very lightweight: it is just over 4 KiB in size, and runs briefly during system startup, so it doesn't stay resident in the background and won't slow down your computer. It relies on the VirtDisk.dll system library, without installing any additional drivers to your system.

History

Sticky was originally written in 2025 in C (hereinafter referred to as "2025 Sticky"), and has served me very well. However, it was too primitive, forcing me to create a separate system service for each virtual hard disk that I wanted to attach on startup. This repository contains the 2026 rewrite of Sticky, written in pure x86 Assembly. Since I had to make changes to 2025 Sticky, I decided to practice my knowledge in x86 Assembly by completely rewriting the project. This source code was made from scratch, and does not contain any of the disassembled sources for 2025 Sticky.

Requirements

To run Sticky, you'll need:

• Windows 7 or later
• An x86 processor

Legal notice

Copyright © 2026 Lucas Almeida. All rights reserved.

Sticky is licensed under the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3.