Windows security making life difficult
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 3:04 am
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!
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!
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.
(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!
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!
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.
That was a part of Windows and GEM in the 80s, and must have been in Macs because GEM was a Mac UI clone. It doesn't help that the default of whether it copies or not is decided by rules which are sometimes complex, hence having to watch the icon.