$UNINSTALLLINK$ not appearing in Windows 10

[Sheri_Steeves]

Hello,

I have encountered a strange issue with InstallAware 19.08 and Windows 10 Tech Preview (Build 10074). As the release date for Windows 10 is the end of June, we are preparing all of our products and for the new O/S.

In testing out installs on Windows 10 (32 and 64) we have seen that the $UNINSTALLLINK$ does not get added to the start menu. You can see this below, the link is defined in my shortcuts, but doesn't appear when I expand the menu. If I look at the file location, the link is there.

In my InstallAware project:

Shortcuts screen in IA

ShortcutsInIA.PNG (18.41 KiB) Viewed 6346 times

What I see after install:

What I see in Windows 10 Tech Preview

ResultingShortcutsW10Startmenu.PNG (27.85 KiB) Viewed 6346 times

The link in the file location:

The shortcut does exist on the system...

ShortcutsInFileLocation.PNG (13.07 KiB) Viewed 6346 times

This doesn't happen for any of the older platforms...

Thanks,

Sheri

[FrancescoT]

Dear Sheri,

I am not able to replicate what you are reporting with the missing UNINSTALLLINK on Win 10 and I also used a test setup that creates a populated and nested shortcut structure.

Are you able to send me a very minimal project that replicates the issue?

Are you able to replicate the same with creating a new dummy project from scratch?
it's just enough to create a new project from the Basic template, without specifying any setting and then to compile it.

Regards

[Sheri_Steeves]

Hello,

Sorry for getting back to this so late. We haven't tried a dummy install yet, but out of the 7 installs that I build for our products, only 2 of them have this behaviour.

The interesting thing is that all of the shortcuts are actually in the %PROGRAMDATA% folder, and the file they point to does exist. They just aren't appearing in the start menu. If I create a second copy of the Uninstall shortcut in the %PROGRAMDATA% shortcut folder, all of a sudden the first one, from the install, appears. The copy never shows in the list. If I remove the copied one, the Uninstall disappears.

One other install has issues on Windows 8, Windows 2012 and Windows 10 x64 App screen where of two shortcuts, with the same title but different paths, only the second shortcut appears. They were originally in their own folders in the Windows 7 style menu. I renamed them so the shortcut names were different - same behaviour.

Do you know of any Windows 10 restrictions/guidelines on naming shortcuts? Does Windows 10 automatically remove duplicate shortcuts?

I can provide you my install project if you need it, and even a copy of the actual install.

Thanks,

Sheri

[FrancescoT]

Dear Sheri,

your shortcut are located under "ProgramData", because I suppose the package as been installed as per-machine and this should not be a problem.

Instead I believe that exist something wrong with your script commands that are creating such shortcuts. Probably you are passing an invalid variable or a variable that doesn't reflect a correct target location.

For what concerns shortcuts guidelines, for what I know nothing is changed on Windows 10. Shortcuts are files in reality and consequently, they are treated as any other file by the OS.

Regards

[Sheri_Steeves]

Francesco,

If the script commands that I am using to create the shortcuts are wrong, then why does double-clicking directly on any of shortcuts in the %PROGRAMDATA% folder work?? If there was something wrong with them - such as invalid variable or a variable that doesn't reflect a correct target location - the shortcuts shouldn't work at all.... but they do.

It is very strange.

Sheri

[FrancescoT]

Dear Sheri

if you are able to replicate the issue with a minimal test project, I'll try to verify what you are reporting.

Regards

[Sheri_Steeves]

Francesco,


We managed to resolve this issue by removing the $UNINSTALLLINK$ shortcut from all of our installs as one of the guidelines for Microsoft is to not have this type of link in the start menu but rather just use the Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs.

The issue we had with other missing shortcuts was finally determined to be a "FEATURE" of the new Windows 10 menu - if a second shortcut item points to the exact same target item, the second shortcut is discarded. We had two shortcuts, one at the root with one title, and one down under a "Samples" folder (if you were on Windows 7) with a different title that both pointed to the same target. On Windows 10, they get lumped into one long list, with the first shortcut winning.

This was complicated by the Windows 10 preview's menu being unpredictable as to what items would show up in the menu after the above condition was detected - took us a while to determine the root cause of our missing menu items. Interestingly enough, in the install that had the missing menu item, the $UNINSTALLLINK$, when we were including it, would show up.

Just thought I would mention it here in case anyone else encounters the same problem. Gotta love working with preview software!

Sheri