InstallAware

Our method of deployment involves always providing full installers, not patches. As a result, when a user runs the installer to update, the previous version is first removed and then the new version is installed. A problem we experience is that shortcuts pinned to the taskbar are invalidated by this process.

To be clear, the shortcut is not placed in the taskbar by the installer. It is pinned there manually by the user when the program is running by right clicking the program in the taskbar and choosing “Pin to Taskbar”. Those users then find their pinned program inaccessible from the taskbar. It appears as a generic white document icon and clicking it gives the following message: “Can't open this item. It might have been moved, renamed, or deleted. Do you want to remove this item?”

It seems to me that the pinned entry should stay in the taskbar since the shortcuts and program paths stay exactly the same between updates. Is it possible to modify the installer to ensure that the user’s pinned entry is preserved across these updates?

Dear Vesigo,

unfortunately there isn't so much to do if the shortcut was pinned by the user.
The pinning process is a complicated stuff and it's not only based on shortcut properties.

The only possible alternative, it's to try to the following VB script. This seems to be capable to pin/un-pin a shortcut.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/deploymentguys/2009/04/08/pin-items-to-the-start-menu-or-windows-7-taskbar-via-script/

If this is true, you may try to forcedly un-pin your shortcut during un-install and after that the un-install gets completed.
However, I don't know if using the above approach, you can also query if the that particular shortcut was effectively pinned or not, or if this returns any error when trying to "un-pin" a not "pinned" shortcut.

*To Run a VB script, you can use the "Run Program" command.

Hope this helps you.

Regards

Francesco,

Thanks for your response. I read through the TechNet article. There's definitely a lot to the pinning processes. I was just hoping that there was a way we could preserve a pinned item across the InstallAware update process. But it appears that as soon as the source of a pinned item is removed, it breaks or disconnects the pin even though the shortcut and EXE files are still named the same and in the same location.