Windows security making life difficult

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eekee
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Windows security making life difficult

Post by eekee »

Windows makes it hard to make shortcuts to some applications. Last time I complained about this, someone helpfully posted a screenshot of the wrong type of app. :) (My fatigue issues were too bad for me to respond at the time.) With some apps, you get an option to "Open file location" and can make a shortcut from there. With others you don't, as seen in the "puzzle" screenshot attached here. There's nothing below the recent item list, and there was no "Open file location" before the recent item list was put into that area. The latter point is seen in the "hex viewer" screenshot.

On looking for the install location of this puzzle app, I was surprised to discover Windows has dozens of hidden shortcuts for the very same app! They're all for the recent items list and look like this:

AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/Recent/ms-gamingoverlay--startuptips-AumId=1867LennardSprong.PortablePuzzleCollection_3mge2jpdracey%21App&ProcessId=9828&WindowId=1509656.lnk

On examining one of these, the target location is given as "The Internet"! Yeah, right. It's actually a URL of type "ms-gamingoverlay://". Annoyingly, the field isn't editable, the text is clipped and it won't let me copy it, so I can't use it to construct a suitable shortcut for the whole app.

I finally found the installations of these two apps, and now I know why you can't make shortcuts to them: They're not even visible to regular users. They're under C:\Program Files\WindowsApps, the listing of which is denied. I'm laughing because these, along with a few other cheap games which have come and gone, are the apps I care about the least, and they're the most well-defended apps on my system! :D I don't even use the hex viewer because I have hex viewers in Eagle Mode and CAL. (I was looking for a hex editor when I installed it.)

The reason I was doing all this was because I decided to give up using Windows Start. It gave me a large colourful advert on a recent search; very disruptive to my thought processes. The simplest option is to use a command line exclusively, shortcuts work fine from PowerShell and CMD.exe. I already use a command line for launching multiple instances of Firefox with different profiles, and because you can't have icons for both unpatched and patched versions of OpenTTD in Start. The latter could probably be fixed with another patch, but the former is a harder problem.

So now I have to find a way to launch these... programs of the Sultan's harem -- very well defended, outsiders don't even get to see them! :lol: I'm not sure whether to go looking for another shell in the hope of finding one which can, or to look for Python modules for working with Windows. I hear Python is the usual way of scripting Windows, these days.
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

Post by iansjack »

You could always just add it to the TaskBar.

But if you really want to create a Desktop shortcut just drag the icon from the Start menu to the Desktop.
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

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iansjack wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2024 4:56 am You could always just add it to the TaskBar.
The main issue is that my brain has difficulty recognizing and picking out icons. It's easier just to type. Since the adverts only appear when typing into Start, adding icons to the taskbar makes little difference. It does help for a few apps as I can use Win-1..9 to launch them, but its easy to accidentally move such pins and I don't want to pin.

Unless you mean pinning PowerShell to the taskbar so I can switch to it with Win-1. I've already done that, but if you have more than 1 shell open, it often doesn't work. Windows pops up thumbnails which often appear blank and can't be clicked. And this is the thing which doesn't work with these sultan's harem apps anyway.
iansjack wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2024 4:56 am But if you really want to create a Desktop shortcut just drag the icon from the Start menu to the Desktop.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, it didn't help. :) It popped up a nice little "Copy" tooltip as I dragged, but didn't create a shortcut file so there's nothing for PowerShell to launch.

I can't see if Windows made any other kind of desktop icon (which might perhaps be a shortcut in some other directory) because desktop icons are disabled and the options to enable them have no effect, not even when the desktop is refreshed.
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

Post by iansjack »

On my two Windows 11 machines dragging created a shortcut. You have to go to the “All programs” view from the Start Menu and drag and drop from there.
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

Post by eekee »

iansjack wrote: Thu Sep 05, 2024 9:18 am You have to go to the “All programs” view from the Start Menu and drag and drop from there.
That worked! Thanks :)
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

Post by nullplan »

So much for Windows being intuitive.
Carpe diem!
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

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I’d say that dragging and dropping from the Start Menu is as, if not more, intuitive as finding an executable in File Manager, right-clicking on it, and selecting a menu item. Drag and dropping has been an intrinsic part of WIMP interfaces since the earliest days.

The mistake is to suppose that anything we do an a computer is intuitive. The most intuitive way of doing anything on a computer is querying Google.

Try creating a shortcut on the Ubuntu desktop to a random program if you think Windows is unintuitive. As for MacOs, I’ve no idea how you perform that operation - but I’ll bet Google could tell me.
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Re: Windows security making life difficult

Post by iansjack »

I've now found out how to do this in MacOs.

1. Find the application in Finder.
2. Right-click on it and select "Make alias"
3. Press Enter
4. Drag this alias to the Desktop and drop it there.
5. Delete the alias in the original folder (the drag and drop has duplicated, not moved, it).

Is this more intuitive than the Windows method of dragging and dropping from the Start Menu? A matter of opinion I guess.

And in Ubuntu? Easy if you already have a shortcut in /usr/share/applications (though hardly intuitive), but if your application hasn't put a shortcut here you'll need to produce a rather arcane text file. I'm going to plump for "definitely not intuitive" in that case.
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