How to create start menu shortcut

Question

I am building a custom installer. How can I create a shortcut to an executable in the start menu? This is what I\'ve come up with so far:

    string pathToExe          


        

Answer 1

This is pretty much the same as this question: Create shortcut on desktop C#.

To copy from that answer, you'll need to create the shortcut file yourself.

using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(appStartMenuPath + ".url"))
{
    writer.WriteLine("[InternetShortcut]");
    writer.WriteLine("URL=file:///" + pathToExe);
    writer.WriteLine("IconIndex=0");
    string icon = pathToExe.Replace('\\', '/');
    writer.WriteLine("IconFile=" + icon);
}

This code is untested, of course, but it was accepted on that other question and it looks right.

I see another answer on that question that lists how to do it with the Windows API and some COM interop, but I'd be tempted to shy away from that and just use the above code if it works. It's more personal preference than anything, and I'd normally be all for using a pre-established API for this, but when the solution is this simple I'm just not sure how worth it that option really is. But for good measure, I believe this code should work. Again, of course, it's totally untested. And especially here where you're playing with things like this, make sure you understand each line before you execute it. I'd hate to see you mess up something on your system because of a blind following to code I posted.

WshShell shell = new WshShell();
IWshShortcut shortcut = (IWshShortcut)shell.CreateShortcut(appStartMenuPath + ".lnk");
shortcut.Description = "Shortcut for TestApp";
shortcut.TargetPath = pathToExe;
shortcut.Save();

You will, of course, also need a reference to the "Windows Script Host Object Model," which can be found under "Add a Reference" then "COM."