Why do renamed or moved application shortcuts in the Start Menu get recreated whenever the application is started?

Question

This is happening with my applications that I create using VS2008 and the built in deployment project to create MSI installers. It goes like this:

1. Install the application, which creates a shortcut on the desktop and a start menu folder containing a shortcut to the application. Pretty normal stuff...
2. Rename the start menu folder (usually done by a user that wants to reorganize his/her start menu).
3. Start the application. When the application starts up, a small dialog opens saying something to the effect of "configuring application...". During this process the original start menu folder is recreated (and the renamed one remains). Pretty annoying stuff...

Also of note, a deleted desktop shortcut does not get recreated (on application start-up) unless the start menu folder is also renamed (and recreated).

I did not see this same behavior back when I was using VS2005.

Much googling on this subject hasn't been very helpful so far. What am I missing here?

At this point, I'm planning on moving to NSIS as my installer tech of choice.

Answer 1

The feature you are describing is called Automatic Repairs and is triggered when the installation package notices that a component it believes is necessary has been moved or deleted. Normally this shouldn't happen if you only rename the start menu folder, but there are occasions when it might.

One such case is when you are putting something other than a shortcut into the start menu folder (like a readme file). If so, put it in the Application Folder and create a shortcut to it instead.