Shortcut Icons disappearing

[MobileMark II]

On some systems that I deploy to, I am experiencing a situation where shorctus that I am creating are "losing" their icons. When I install all is fine. After a time, the shorcuts regress to the "default" shorcut icon. What is going on?

[sinan]

This can happen with advertised shortcuts - the sure fix is to use regular shortcuts. Unfortunately, advertised shortcuts behave strangely and can lose their icons as you have indicated. This can happen on identical installs of the product onto identical hardware at different times for no apparent reason.

[MobileMark II]

I am using regular shortcuts

[sinan]

Are you manually specifying a shortcut icon file and icon index?

[MobileMark II]

I am specifying an icon file (.ico), but I am not specifying an index.

[sinan]

I believe that is the problem - its the same problem that happens with advertised shortcuts. When a shortcut is advertised, or its regular but you are specifying a custom icon, Windows Installer stores the specified icon (as identified by the index, or 0 if the first one) in the MSI database. Unfortunately, this storage tends to go haywire as you have observed. The only workaround is to not specify a custom icon. Advertised shortcuts, even if no custom icon is specified, store their icons in the MSI database anyways (as they are meant to display the icon even when the application hasn't been fully installed yet, but advertised), and therefore they are always potential candidates for this problem.

[sinan]

We might have a permanent fix for this problem available. If you are able to, could you please:

0) Close your IDE
1) Backup the file msidbwrap.dll in your InstallAware folder
2) Download the new version from http://www.installaware.com/blockspon/msidbwrap.dll and place in your InstallAware folder
3) Re-open the IDE and re-build your project
4) Test the produced setup thoroughly to verify that icons are no longer disappearing after a period of time

Thank you!

[MobileMark II]

Will do. I'll let you know if it works.

[Bugger]

I'm also experiencing this problem, I'll give the patch a shot too.

[sinan]

Please do. Note that this won't be an issue with regular shortcuts that use the default icon.

[MobileMark II]

Out of curriosity, what is the default icon? Is it the icon of the exe the shorcut points to?

[sinan]

Yes, the first icon found in the EXE. The icon file, and icon index fields are very rarely used, only when the EXE contains multiple icons and you want to show one of the non-default ones.

[Bugger]

After testing this is still broken. I find a reboot tends to cause the icon to dissappear.

Any other ideas? Any way to point the shortcut to a file deployed in the build rather than the installer created dir?

[Bugger]

after more testing, it appears that the temp folder is being removed directly after installation finishes. I imagine the icon stays on the desktop because it is somehow cached with the shortcut.

[Gareth Owen]

I found this issue on a couple of occasions, It seemed that the location for the icon was pointing to a non existant directory in the MSI installation directory. An issue when I have been adding and removing lots of versions of my software.

In the end I updated the GUI ID of my application and things started working again.



For the moment anyway