SyMenu - Troubleshooting & Bug Reports - program fails to start from symenu - Messages

Message from Gianluca

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:56:44 GMT

Yes.

Thanks to Robin that reports the same strange behavior for some apps, I discovered that other programs, like Emule, suffer of the same problem.

This problem is due to a not perfect portability of these programs: they trust in the existence of a parameter that is not strictly pertinent with portable programs. The parameters is 'Working Directory'.

You can see this attribute in quite any Windows link (it's usually called 'Start in').

Well even if I think that this kind of programs are not perfectly portable, since next SyMenu version (1.09) you'll find a new 'Advanced Params' that will be WorkingDirectory.

I've already tested hwinfo32.exe with and without the new parameter and the result was exactly what I expected: with WorkingDirectory setted hwinfo works.

Please stay tuned for next release!

Gianluca

Message from Coastie

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:57:53 GMT

Worked great, thank you.

Is that a useful trick to get other programs to run with symenu?
edited by Coastie on 20/01/2010

Message from ignotus

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:49:20 GMT

It's because that program needs to install a kernel driver that is included with the program. The program searches the current directory for that driver and can't find it because SyMenu's root directory is the current directory.

Here is a workaround:
put these 3 lines in a file called hwinfo32.bat

@echo off
start /D \hwinfo32.exe
exit

Replace the above with the path that SyMenu uses for the path to your program. For example mine was .\hw32_335\

Then put the hwinfo32.bat file in that same directory. Finally, change SyMenu's entry for your program. All you should have to do is change the .exe to .bat in the path box.

If you need more of an explanation I can whip up some screenshots for you.

Message from Coastie

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:19:23 GMT

Portable version working great launching the exe from the folder through explorer, but not when launching from symenu.

http://www.hwinfo.com/

Any idea how I can fix it?