Re: DOS app icons Under Vista (A Fix?)

[Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxx]

And a little further digging brought this:


http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/vista.html

(5) A minor but annoying detail: If you create or reuse a desktop
shortcut for WPDOS, it can only appear on the Windows desktop as a plain
white rectangle with an arrow in the lower-left corner. Desktop
shortcuts for DOS-based applications running under Vista cannot display
any other icon that you might wish to use. (See the workaround described
elsewhere on this page.)

(The workaround mentioned is this:)

MS-DOS programs use a generic icon under Vista

Note: Before performing the steps described here, you may need to
disable Vista's User Access Control (UAC) security feature until you
have completed making the changes. If Windows will not let you open the
relevant files, or bothers you with prompts, download and run TweakUAC
and turn off UAC or switch it to "quiet mode"; when you are finished
making and testing the changes suggested here, run the utility again to
restore UAC.

Desktop shortcuts for DOS-based programs running under Windows Vista
display only a blank generic icon, as in the example shown here. When
editing the properties sheet of a desktop shortcut, you can select any
icon you like, and the icon that you select will appear in the General
tab of the properties sheet, but it will not appear on the Vista
desktop. Only the generic icon will actually appear on the desktop.

This problem can be worked around in either of two ways:

Either (1) Create a batch file that runs the DOS-based program, create a
shortcut to the batch file, and assign a custom icon to the shortcut.
(For detailed information on creating and changing shortcuts, see
another page on this site.) This workaround may cause minor problems in
memory management, etc.; further information will be posted here when it
becomes available. (But see the note elsewhere on this page about batch
files under Vista.)

Or (2) Right-click on the Windows desktop; select New from the pop-up
menu, then Shortcut; enter cmd.exe when prompted to enter the location
of the item; type a name such as "WPDOS" when prompted to type a name
for the shortcut; click Finish; right-click on the resulting shortcut
and choose Properties; on the Shortcut tab, in the Target field, do not
change what you see there, but carefully move the cursor to the right of
cmd.exe, type a space, then the following text (replacing c:\wp51 with
the actual location of WPDOS on your system): /c c:\wp51\wp.com (note
very carefully that this begins with a forward slash, then the letter
"c", then a space, then a directory location), then click on Change Icon
and change the icon as described below.

If you use either of these workarounds, you may want to use one of the
two Vista-ready WP icons included in this archive file; the two images
are based on the Novell and Corel logos used for Windows versions of
WordPerfect. Download the archive file to your Windows desktop;
double-click on the archive to open it; and copy one or both icons to
your WP directory. (You may need to disable User Access Control
temporarily in order to do so.) Right-click on the shortcut to your
batch file; in the Program tab, use the "Change Icon" button, and select
one of these two icons. The two icons look like this, WPNovell.ico on
the left, WPCorel.ico on the right.

You may also use the more familiar WP icons available with earlier
versions of Windows. For WPDOS 5.1, after pressing the "Change Icon"
button in your batch file shortcut, type MORICONS.DLL in the filename
field, and choose the familiar gray icon. For WPDOS 6.x, download this
icon library file; copy it to your WPDOS directory; and, after pressing
the "Change Icon" button in your batch file shortcut, navigate to your
WPDOS directory, choose the file named WPICON60.ICL, and select the
first icon in the library.


-BrianH.



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Patricia M.
Godfrey
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 11:57 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: [Junk released by Allow List] Re: DOS app icons Under Vista


Yes, it is definitely Vista's policy toward DOS apps. I copied
dBase5 to the Vista laptop (and it actually appears to work),
tried to change the icon, and the same thing happened: went
through the whole routine, but Apply stayed grayed out, and it
stayed the piece of paper icon. What we need here is a good,
old-fashioned hack, using the word in its laudatory sense: a
work-around for a piece of arrogant officiousness on the part of
a commercial product.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx