[Visual Studio Setup Project] Advertised Shortcuts

Hi all.
It took me some time to figure this out so I thought I'd share :).

Advertised Shortcuts Scenario:
When creating a shortcut in a Visual Studio setup project they are created as advertised shortcuts. Now when an advertised shortcut is launched, before it does what you want it to do i.e. start an application etc it checks and validates the installation... If it deems that something is missing or has changed it will try to fix the installation by running the msi file again which in my case resulted in some very annoying errors ...

Tools required:
To use the solution I am about to describe below you will have to install Orca.

Solution:
The solution I found was to disable the advertised shortcuts. Even though that sounds fairly straight forward, if you don't know where to look it is not.

Steps:
1. Open Orca
2. Open your msi file
3. In the "Tables" listing of Orca click the "Property" table
4. Add a new row in the "Property" table with its Property value set to "DISABLEADVTSHORTCUTS" and its Value set to "1". NOTE this is case sensitive
5. Save the msi and you are done

The only issue with this approach is that every time you create a new msi you will have to repeat the steps as described above.

I attach an image with the property described above for further clarification.

I hope this helps. Feel free to comment.

Cheers,

--Stav.