Desktop shortcut for each user

[DesktopJinx]

I have an MSI package with Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts.

I want the Start Menu shortcuts to remain in All Users, but I want to create a Desktop shortcut for each user of the machine -- NOT to All Users. My users are not admins and they want to be able to delete shortcuts to apps they don't use.

I could drop in an Active Setup hook to execute a VBscript once per user, and that script looks up the paths to the All Users Start Menu and the current user's Desktop, then does a file copy of the particular .LNK file -- but this seems like doing it the hard way. I already have an MSI, can't I leverage it to do this work for me? Is there some friendly thing in AdminStudio's InstallShield Editor that will help accomplish this? In an MSI generated from an ISM, or (in the case of a provided MSI) in a transform?

[Cary_R]

Hi there,

ActiveSetup is one way of doing this, be it a script or the repair of the MSI package.

Now, what Microsoft says for this is to use AutoRepair by including a registry keypath under HKCU in the component that you want to reinstall each time to the User Profile. You'll really want to set this up, even if you are using ActiveSetup, since such a keypath will mark these components as "Broken" and reinstall their payload in an ActiveSetup repair or an AutoRepair.

Hope this helps!

[DesktopJinx]

Thank you for your reply. Tyro question -- how do I designate that one shortcut (Start Menu) is for all users, and another shortcut (Desktop) is for each user? The GUI doesn't distinguish that I see, and Installer is just using the allusers property to determine the destination path of all shortcuts, isn't it? Do I need to treat the per-user Desktop shortcut as a .LNK file, not a managed shortcut, in its own component with an HKCU entry to let Installer know it's a per-user component?

[Cary_R]

Other good questions.

In the Shortcuts view if you want to hard-code per-user or per-machine shortcuts, you'll have to manually build up the shortcut destinations based on right-clicking and selecting 'Show Folder' -> ALLUSERSPROFILE, USERPROFILE.