SC doesn't stay pinned on the taskbar after update

[Menno555]

Very minor bug, but still.
I have SC pinned on my taskbar (Windows 11 Pro 23H2 22631.4037). Not so long ago, it would stay pinned after a SC update.
Now it doesn't anymore: after an update, the pinned icon becomes a white page icon that point towards nothing. Only after starting SC with the desktop shortcut and pinning it again on the taskbar, it stays there.
Like I said, a very minor bug

Menno

[admin]

I will have a look to see if I can work out what is going on. Although the upgrade removes the original target for the shortcut, it should get replaced with an identical target.

I suspect if you shortcut to SharpCap.exe in the install folder instead of the default desktop shortcut, it will be fine.

thanks,

Robin

[carlomuccini]

Win10 pro
it's always happened
I finally removed the icon from the task bar and left it on the desktop (bottom) and it still works

Carlo

[Jean-Francois]

Hello,

One other thing with the taskbar:
On my laptop, I set that the taskbar is normally not showed, but visible if the mouse is moving on the bottom of the monitor.
I guess that an old version of SharpCap allowed the view of the taskbar, but now with the last versions of SharpCap, the taskbar does not appear.

I can see the taskbar, only after selecting a different software and then moving the mouse at the monitor bottom side.
It seems that something in SharpCap is now blocking the taskbar.

Jean-Francois

[procyon12]

Hi all,

Jean-Francois, my laptop is configured similarly, but I can't confirm your problem. With a running SC (current v 64bit on W10-64) the taskbar is not visible, when I move the mouse over it, the taskbar appears.

Christian

[admin]

Hi,

I suspect the taskbar appearing or not appearing is related to the fact that SharpCap draws the border area of its window itself (title bar, resize borders, etc) rather than letting the system do that part. It's necessary to draw the borders to get the border are dark when in dark colour scheme, but it is a real fiddle to get it working exactly right.

Recently (maybe within the last 2 months or so) I fixed an issue where SharpCap was 1 pixel too short when in full screen view (you could see a row of pixels between the bottom of the SharpCap window and the taskbar). I wonder if that fix to get the window to cover the very bottom row actually introduced the issue with the taskbar not popping up? I just went back and checked and the single pixel gap issue was fixed on 20th June, so if that ties in with the taskbar problem starting then the two are related.

cheers,

Robin

[admin]

Just to follow up,

I tried to look into this one, so I pinned to the taskbar and upgraded and saw the problem.

Right, I thought, let's do that again and keep an eye on the shortcut files and see if they are changed by the upgrade or something... So I uninstalled, went back to an older version, went through it all again and it didn't break

The actual shortcut link file that gets created when you pin something to the taskbar lives in the directory

Code: Select all

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

I can only assume that somehow that might encode some other info about the target than the file name/location of the .exe file. If anyone happens to be able to capture it happening and can grab me

* A copy of the shortcut file before upgrade
* A copy of the shortcut file after upgrade when the link no longer works
* A copy of the shortcut file after unpin/repin, which should presumably create a new shortcut file that works.

I can then have a look at those files and see if I see any differences between them

cheers,

Robin

[Menno555]

Hi Robin

I'll check with the next update.

For now I just checked that folder and there is a thing that stands out with the SC shortcut/pin: when you check the properties, it doesn't have a target directory nor a target specified. Normally it would have the directory with the EXE as target directory and that EXE-file as target. Because of that, the button to open the target directory is greyed out, as is the button to change the icon.
All other pins there have that, but SC doesn't. So my educated guess is that the system looses track of it because there is no target defined when (or after) the update takes place. The shortcut/pin does stay in the mentioned directory and on the taskbar, but it has no icon nor path to the EXE, it's literary lost.
How it does open SC in the first place without an EXE specified, that is something you might know?
See screenshot below. It's all in Dutch but it speaks for itself.

Clipboard_09-13-2024_01.jpg (41.78 KiB) Viewed 1147 times

[admin]

Ah, now that's interesting, since I have had a look and the desktop shortcut created by the installer is the same...

So, I suspect that something is not quite right with the desktop shortcut, and that gets duplicated when pinned to the taskbar maybe? I know how the desktop shortcut gets created by the installer, so I can have a poke around there and see if I have missed anything

thanks!

Robin

[admin]

Ah, OK, now I have it...

I was creating special shortcuts that work with the installer - if you have managed to delete some of the files in the install folder or similar then when the shortcut is run, Windows will jump in and repair the install automatically. All quite neat, but I think it is the thing breaking the pinning from working (it also causes the 'Target Location' not to show in the shortcut properties).

I'm going to try turning that off, which will leave a normal shortcut, which should stay pinned. It will also not try to auto-repair when the shortcut is clicked, which actually might be a bonus, as if someone goes back to an old version of a camera SDK DLL then the auto-repair can put the SharpCap default version back.

cheers,

Robin