Program is fine but using a shortcut makes it fail

I was curious about the Questioner's issue about using a FileWatcher and flashing a taskbar button when the application was started from a shortcut. And, the answer posted by @Jack Dang (WICLOUD CORPORATION) discussing shortcut specifics and flashing the taskbar button of an active window heightened my curiosity.

So I wrote a Windows forms test application that watched a directory and flashed its taskbar button when files were copied to the directory. The application also displayed its StartupPath, Current Directory and if started by a shortcut the specified "start in" directory.

I observed that the application flashed its taskbar button in all cases upon the addition of files to the watched directory. This was the case even when it was the active, foreground application as well as when there was no specification for the shortcut's "start in" directory.

Hi @Devon Nullman ,

Thanks for reaching out.

In cases like this, the cause usually is the shortcut’s “Start in” setting. When you run the EXE directly, Windows starts the app using its own folder as the working directory. When you use a shortcut, Windows instead uses whatever is defined in the shortcut’s Start in field. If that field is blank or pointing somewhere else, certain UI-related behaviors (including flashing) can behave differently.

I would recommend:

1. Right-click the shortcut
2. Select Properties
3. Check the Start in field
4. Make sure it points to the same folder where your EXE resides

Also, ensure the shortcut isn’t configured to run with different privileges (for example, “Run as administrator”) compared to how you normally launch the app, as that can sometimes affect window focus and flashing behavior.

If the issue persists, you may want to verify that your flashing logic is using a valid window handle and that the window is not already active when calling the flash method. Windows will not flash an already active window.

Hope this helps! If my answer was helpful - kindly follow the instructions here so others with the same problem can benefit as well.

If this is hard to achieve, maybe a notification can be displayed or an icon in the notification area (on the right side of the taskbar) can be manipulated.

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.notifyicon

Windows does not treat the shortcut as the identity of the running process. Once the app starts, the taskbar button (and its icon/flash behavior) is always associated with the executable’s own identity (AppUserModelID or, if none is set, the EXE path), not with the shortcut that launched it.

When the app is started via a shortcut, the FileSystemWatcher logic still runs (so the backup works), but any code that depends on the shortcut’s icon or shortcut-specific identity will not affect the taskbar button. The taskbar will continue to use the EXE’s icon and identity, so “flashing the app icon” based on shortcut metadata will not work.

To get consistent flashing behavior regardless of how the app is launched:

1. Ensure the flashing code targets the window associated with the running process (for example, using the main window handle) rather than anything derived from the shortcut.
2. If a custom icon is required, assign a custom AppUserModelID to the application and associate the desired icon with that AUMID, so the taskbar always uses the same icon for the process.

Windows does not provide a way to force the taskbar to use the shortcut’s icon instead of the executable’s icon for a running Win32 application. This is by design per the Application User Model (AppUserModel) behavior.

References:

• System.IO.FileSystemWatcher class
• Basics of .NET Framework File I/O and the File System (Visual Basic)
• Force the display of a shortcut icon in the taskbar instead of the executable icon - Microsoft Q&A