4

On Windows 10, my Form application is showing as alphanumeric characters (_1F036AE84FF792FB79A74F) on Startup tab in Task Manager. It is a MSI installation file.

Following is the path it is running the exe from:

C:\Users\win10user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Installer\{ProductCode-Of-App}

How can I show Form application instead of this alphanumeric value?

EDIT : I am using Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Installer Projects to create MSI file

EDIT TWO:

Windows 7 (msconfig.exe):

enter image description here

Windows 10 (Task Manager):

enter image description here

Here I have placed screenshots of how my application name appears on both Windows 7 & Windows 10.

FaizanHussainRabbani
  • 3,256
  • 3
  • 26
  • 46
  • You should say which tool you are using to build the MSI and how you created the shortcut. I think you can get this issue with Visual Studio setups when you don't recreate the shortcut when the exe changes, something like that. – PhilDW Oct 03 '16 at 17:16
  • I edited my post @PhilDW – FaizanHussainRabbani Oct 04 '16 at 04:52
  • Is this visible during setup or afterwards? – Mihail Stancescu Nov 03 '16 at 07:33
  • @MihailStancescu Once application is installed, in Startup tab of Task Manager, it is shown as alphanumeric representation instead of application name. – FaizanHussainRabbani Nov 03 '16 at 08:19
  • 1
    You made it too hard to guess what you tried to accomplish. Sounds like you did something to get your program to automatically start up when the user logs in and *whatever* you did doesn't pan out well on Win10. The correct procedure is not that intuitive. [This post](http://stackoverflow.com/a/5093606/17034) explains it well, I verified that it works just fine on Win10. – Hans Passant Nov 03 '16 at 08:53
  • If you are signing it, how are you signing your exe? In particular, are you passing a `/d` description to `signtool sign`? – Michael Urman Nov 03 '16 at 12:22

2 Answers2

8

There doesn't seem to be a way to fix this with Visual Studio itself. The underlying issue is that Task Manager displays the Name it sees in the Icon table of the MSI file. So fixing it requires using an MSI file editor such as Orca to alter that name.

Open the MSI file with Orca and do a search for that string you see in the Startup (just the first few characters will suffice). You should see it in two places. One is the Icon table, so change it to something like My Application. The other place you'll see it is in the Shortcut table in the Icon field. Put exactly the same text in that field (and it literally must be an exact match because these things are database keys). Then save the MSI file. This corrected the issue when I tested it.

If this a regular thing then you could script the MSI change as a post-build event by running WiRunSql.vbs (Windows SDK) with the SQL to update those two fields.

PhilDW
  • 20,260
  • 1
  • 18
  • 28
  • Trowing in a link to a sample for how you can [post process an MSI using WiRunSql.vbs](https://stackoverflow.com/a/51103086/129130) (all the way at the bottom of the answer). Hope you don't mind Phil. I am not crazy about that approach, but sometimes it is what people want to get things done. I would much rather [use a different deployment tool](https://stackoverflow.com/a/50229840/129130). – Stein Åsmul Aug 24 '18 at 04:17
1

This maybe an error with the VS extension.

Is that the path you are installing your application? How is that named on disk?

I suggest using Wix Toolset. I've used it and I can say it's more powerful then standard installer projects.

Mihail Stancescu
  • 4,088
  • 1
  • 16
  • 21