Winforms app: Wrong icon in start menu search - winforms

I'm building a simple Winforms application that deploys via msi (Visual Studio setip project). The msi creates a shortcut on the users desktop and the start menu.
Everywhere (desktop, start menu, taskbar when program is running, .exe file) the program icon is displayed correctly.
But not when I type the program name in the start menu search (see screenshot below). There some generic icon is displayed.
I quadruple-checked the icon set in Visual Studio > Winforms Project > Properties > Application and the icon for the shortcut set via the Visual Studio setup project. The .ico file has many different resolutions embedded, up to 512x512px. Since it's working fine everywhere else (except in the search) I can't think of anything als I could try.

Hans' comment was the solution for me. It seems that Windows caches the old/wrong icon. When I tried it on a clean Windows 10, it worked immediately.
Of course, I tried to clear the icon caches according to Application icon is blank when started from Process.Start or the script at http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-rebuild-the-icon-cache-in-windows but this did not work on my machine (even with a lot of restarts and killing of explorer.exe).

Related

Unwanted general icon under specified file type icon after installing a WinForm app

I'm developing a WinForm app which needs to set the icon for file types specified in Setup project.
My OS is Win7 x64. Visual Studio 2017 Community and .Net Framework 4.6 are used. Icon has transparent pixels and is 128x128.
The problem is, after installation, icons are shown above another icon:
I just want files to have the exact icon I set:
Inkscape has the same problem.
Edit. I've already tested the following workarounds:
Resize the icon to 256x256.
Delete IconCache.db from AppData\Local folder and restart explorer.exe, which is recommended for broken-icons situation (all or some of files and shortcuts have a general icon).

How do I fix DPI scaling issues for Visual Studio 2017 Windows Forms

I've been encountering this issue ever since I bought this laptop with 4k display in 2015. With a lot of effort I managed to work around the issue but I'm growing tired of it.
VS2017 is supposedly DPI aware hence I do not expect any issues when creating a simple MDI Parent Form and running the app. But to my frustration the icons in the toolStrip (just the standard one in the MDI parent form) are scaled horribly.
When I create a form with a button on it which looks just fine in Visual Studio 2017 designer and I run the app and load the form, the button text isn't completely shown.
My display settings are as follows:
Resolution: 3840x2160
Scaled 250% (in display settings) because at 100% everything is unreadable
I've tried to find solutions, but the only workable thing I could find was setting my visual studio designer to dpi-unaware via registry (link here)
Help anyone?
Update When I add a new MDI form with the setting of DPI-awareness OFF, everything looks OK except Visual Studio itself (blurry).
I have similar problem when working with Windows Forms (Windows Forms Designer) on Visual Studio 2017, but I think it would be the same on Visual Studio 2019.
From Microsoft documentation here, there is a tip to disable the scaling/DPI aware feature.
If you prefer to manage settings from the command line, devenv.exe
takes /noscale as a command-line parameter to run in 100% scaling
mode.
So, basically, I just created a shortcut on the Desktop to Visual Studio (devenv.exe) and added the parameter /noscale on the shortcut Target field like so:
"...\path\to\IDE\devenv.exe" /noscale
So, everytime Visual Studio is started through the shortcut, it will always start with 100% scaling mode. If you use high resolution screen (high-dpi) screen, you will notice that the Visual Studio text will appear a little bit blurry because of this.
You should change the settings so there won't be a difference when the program runs on different machines.
Go to the project's properties page, then to Manifest Tool and then Input and Output. Change the DPI awareness to 'none'

Behaviours in wpf apps Microsoft expression blend 4

I am using Microsoft expression blend 4 and i want to add a simple button,in a wpf application, which by clicking it(on "Run Project" mode) navigates the user to another existing wpf application in expression blend 4.This can be done by using a method but maybe I used the wrong method or i used the right method the wrong way.To be more specific i dragged on the button(that i want to make the task i mentioned) the "Launch UriOrFile Action" method but i realised(by making experiments with various files on desktop and using internet url's) that i can only link the running wpf application with random files or internet sites and not to another wpf application as i wanted(when i put the path of the wpf application it pops up a window saying"windows explorer has stopped working",something that didnt occured when i put random file's paths or internet sites url's).If anyone understands my problem let me know!thanks!!
Check out Process.Start. Create a command that fires code that calls that method.

What's different about Screensaver preview in Windows 8?

I'm working on a simple WPF-based screensaver and can't get the thumbnail preview to work.
When you open the display control panel and go to configure the screensaver, the selected screensaver is supposed to display a thumbnail preview within the dialog:
I've found several good examples online of how to do this, including:
Writing a screen saver in WPF
WPF Screensaver (Codeplex)
CC Hearts Screen Saver
Following these examples, I couldn't get anything to work - the preview thumbnail turns black, but nothing else appears. Downloading each of these (and a few others) and running them had the same result - a blank preview thumbnail. I've done this before on Windows 7 and it wasn't hard, so I was a bit frustrated.
Copying the binaries across to a Windows XP machine, I found that each of them showed a preview thumbnail successfully.
So, there's something that's changed between Windows 7 and Windows 8.
What do I need to do differently to enable my WPF screensaver to properly display a thumbnail preview on Windows 8?
I've found the most common problems with moving code from Win 8 to Xp is permission and dependencies. Check that the files are not needing some weird permissions (not sure what permission the preview runs with) and that all dependencies are honoured (also their permissions).
If I remember right, all windows screen savers are just renamed exe files with command line arguments. Maybe try rename it and run it directly?
Check what version of the framework you are using and try to use the client profile if possible
Also Try this small workaround if helps:
In Windows Explorer Go to > Options > Change folder and search
options then click on the View tab and uncheck the box that
says Always show icons, never thumbnails.
I hope it should work.

Why do my toolbox items disappear in Visual Studio 2008?

I'm working on a solution that contains multiple projects targeting Windows Mobile 5 and standard Windows applications.
Lately when opening up a form in designer the common UI controls (textbox, button, label, etc etc...) have vanished leaving only the controls defined within the project.
Resetting the toolbox has no effect. A google search suggested deleting the toolbox temp files in the Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0, however this was only successful in bringing back the default controls for Windows Mobile 5. The WinForms controls are still mysteriously missing.
Also, if I right-click and Select All on the toolbox, all of the WinForms controls do in fact come up, however they're all grayed out.
Has anyone else experienced this?
I just had a similiar problem. In a managed C++ project all the default toolbox items disappeared form the winforms designer. After playing around for a while I found that there was a problem in the .vcproj file.
<VisualStudioProject
ProjectType="Visual C++"
Version="9,00"
Name="COLLADA Import"
ProjectGUID="{0DEEF9B6-1929-44E3-92EC-13712839FB63}"
RootNamespace="COLLADAImport"
Keyword="ManagedCProj"
TargetFrameworkVersion="0"
>
When you set TargetFrameworkVersion to a valid number, for example 131072 for .Net 2.0, the toolbox items will be back.
If you right click on the Toolbox and select 'Choose Items...' and then sort by the 'Namespace' column, you can then select the ones you need (for example System.Windows.Forms for WinForms).
You can multiselect with Shift and then select/deselect the group.
The controls then reappear in the Toolbox as enabled.
I've noticed this exact same thing for regular WinForms as well. I can't speak to mobile applications but in regular winforms this has a tendency to happen.
I believe it's actually a bug in Visual Studio.
There are some things you can do (again, for WinForms. I'm not sure about mobile) with adding attributes to your control. Such as:
[ToolboxBitmap(typeof(MyControl), "MyControlBitmap")]
There are some other useful related things on this site:
http://en.csharp-online.net/Design-Time_Integration-Attributes
I had exactly the same problem (after installing Windows Mobile SDK all items in the toolbox were greyed out).
I've startet the Visual Studio 2008 command line as administrator and started the following command (WARNING - all your settings are lost !!)
devenv /setup /resetuserdata /selfreg /resetskippkgs
After that the toolbox looked fine and worked like on the first day.
The idea came from this thread: connect.microsoft.com
Go to the Tools menu and choose import & export settings, then choose the 'reset all' setting, then yes. Save your current settings, after that you'll have your toolbox reappear.
Actually you may be able to add a registry key to get this to work also.
Make sure you're not in Debug mode.
If you are running Visual Studio 2008 under vista, try running it as an Administrator. Right click on the shortcut and select Run as Administrator.
Well guess what install Service pack 1 for VS 2008 and it would go away and if you have wireless mouse and keyboard turn it off. Choose one of these two both work.

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