Re: Icons in taskbar OT

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

I did some testing on the W2K and XP boxes, and further on the
Vista laptop, and here is what I learned:
(N.B. all of what follows is based on simply using the native
Windows tools available and known to everyone. Whether
third-party addons or deep, deep system internals techniques--of
the sort known only to Robert--could achieve different results, I
don't know.)
1. In all three opsyses, if you want a DOS app to have a
distinctive icon on the desktop, on the titlebar when it's
running, and in the taskbar when it's running, you have to run it
as a child of cmd.exe. That is, it must be launched by a lnk that
points to
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c d:\xy4\editor.exe
(or c:\winnt\system32, etc., if in W2K)
2. In W2K and XP, a shortcut that points directly to editor.exe
(or any other DOS executable) can have a distinctive DESKTOP icon
assigned it with the Change Icon module on the pif properties
page. But the titlebar and taskbar will still display the generic
command prompt (c:\) icon when the app is running.
3. In Vista, a shortcut pointing directly to a DOS executable or
to command.com will display ONLY the blank piece of paper icon.
But if you create the shortcut to point to cmd.exe, you can
assign it a distinctive icon, and that icon will appear not only
on the desktop but also on the titlebar and in the taskbar when
the app s running.
Note that you have to create the shortcut this way from scratch.
If you create a shortcut by pointing it directly to editor.exe or
any other DOS executable, Vista somehow remembers that, keeps it
a pif even if you then change the target to
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c d:\xy4\editor.exe
And if you try (from a command prompt, because Vista won't let
you even LOOK at the inner contents of the Desktop) to rename
that pif to a lnk, you end up with a very abbreviated properties
page.

Bry, would you like screen shots of all this?

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx