Shortcut Icons disappearing

[sinan]

I should also advise this is not a problem isolated to InstallAware, but all Windows Installer setups seem to be afflicted by it. And your remedy does seem to be the cure for most of them. For instance, I have read on Wise's Windows Installer forums that some people had to start their projects from scratch (meaning they implicitly generated a new package GUID), and only then would their icons re-appear.

[Bugger]

That sounds shaky to me. What's to say that after the product is released the problem won't crop up for some people, and not others?

In my opinion, this feature is useless if it can't be used reliably.

To get around it, I'll probably write a script or utility to deploy the shortcuts, and point them to an icon installed with our application.

I hate having to use band-aids.

[sinan]

You are right, but there is a very simple workaround available - to just use regular shortcuts, and not manually specify icon indexes or files. Then MSI creates regular shortcuts which work properly. Otherwise, especially if advertising is used, you cannot even change the shortcut properties in Explorer (try doing so, you will see the fields are dimmed), and MSI manages them internally but somewhere down the road...problems can crop-up