Vista, Shortcut, secondary drive, and patchme. So simple, so irritating.

[hotsh0t5]

I've solved some pretty complex problems but now i'm not sure who I want to strangle first. Here's the scenario:
0. Have Vista, run as administrator, disabled UAC blah blah blah.
1. Fresh Install of Titanium to a secondary drive
2. Modified eqhost.txt
3. attempted to modify EQ shortcut
4. Running said shortcut causes the game to patch to live
5. Rage ensues.

When you first hit properties on the shortcut it looks like so:
D:\Everquest\EverQuest.exe
Then i change the shortcut to:
"D:\Everquest\EverQuest.exe" patchme -w
HOWEVER when you hit APPLY it AUTOMATICALLY changes back to:
D:\Everquest\EverQuest.exe
It is NOT set to read only and I checked OTHER shortcuts on the C: drive and they HAVE "the quotes"

Other than freeing up space on my C drive and installing it there, what the FREAK can I do to fix it, short of holding bill gates hostage.

P.S. They wouldn't take me alive.