Application shortcut without binding to launch screen in Windows 8 using C ++

Question

Our company has an installer written in C ++ that creates program shortcuts using IShellLink, as described in: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb776891%28v=vs. 85% 29.aspx

In Windows 8, all shortcuts created in the Start menu also appear as titles on the Start screen. What we want to do is programmatically control which icons appear on the launch screen. The following article describes the option "System.AppUserModel.StartPinOption" as:

To create an application shortcut without attaching it to the Start screen, you can set the following property in the shortcut: System.AppUserModel.StartPinOption = 1. Symbolic name for 1 APPUSERMODEL_STARTPINOPTION_NOPINONINSTALL.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj673981812828=vs.85%29.aspx

This seems possible using the Windows installer, however I have not found a way to implement the same functionality programmatically in C ++, given our context.

If anyone has information about this, or some kind of example, this would be very helpful.

Answer 1

I found that "..NewInstall" literally means that. Custom settings for tiles seem to be saved even after deleting / updating .lnk files. This is probably good, since updates will not reset the user environment, but that means I had to use fresh installations of Windows 8 during testing. I used the VM field to minimize pain. At least I do not know how to remove properties after installation from the environment.