Windows 10 x64 22H2 and Shortcuts

Greetings all,

Having finally been pushed into moving my personal rig onto Win10, I've encountered a few exasperating niggles with the new OS that hadn't been cause for vexation at work. Hope someone has some insights into ways to beat them.

The first is that MS, in their infinite sagacity, have done away with the Recent Items list in the Start Menu. I've worked around it by creating a pinned shortcut to the Recent Items list, but it's a poor and clumsy substitute. Short of trying third-party shell changers, are there any ways around it?

The second is more irritating and I believe more widespread. Put simply: Windows 10 does not seem to support the use of shortcuts within folders as directories.

For example: I have three photo albums from walks. I want to have my desktop wallpaper use some of the best shots, so I set up a folder named Desktop Photos and create shortcuts, within that folder, from selected images in albums 1, 2, and 3. If I then select Desktop Photos as the source folder for my wallpaper, Windows simply does not recognise that the shortcuts are links to images.

Another example: Let's say I wish to create a slideshow of such images instead. (In this case, I'll use the old Windows Photo Viewer application, but third-party programs (e.g. IrfanView64) behave similarly.) I open the shortcut in the Desktop Photos folder, which in turn opens the file, and start the slideshow. Let's say that this shortcut points to Album 1, photo B, and that the next shortcut is to Album 1, Photo D. Expected behaviour: The next image displayed in the slideshow will be Album 1, Photo D. Actual behaviour: The next image is Album 1, Photo C.

In other words, Win10 does not treat shortcuts to images like images. It appears either to consider them shortcuts to a location, or not-images, therefore not eligible for inclusion in image-using programs.

(The sole exception, intriguingly, is the Photos app. In that case, the app will open Album 1, Photo B - and nothing else!)

I cannot be the only human ever to use Win10 who's run across this problem, but web searches have proven useless. The few threads I've found elsewhere, including on MS's on Knowledgebase, go nowhere. What the heck's going on, and has anyone ever found a solution?

Cheers!

Perfect, I'll definitely look at Open Shell! Looks like it does what I need and then some. I'd be especially pleased if it resurrected Aero.

To your second point:

dalchina said:

If a program is written to handle folders containing a certain type of file, that's the extent to which it will work. If that does not include checking whether a .lnk file points to a type of file that program is capable of handling, that simply won't happen.

I'd accept this argument happily, were it not for the fact that the program hasn't changed. I ran an in-place upgrade over my old Win7 installation; this is literally the same instance of Windows Photo Viewer that was installed on this machine when it was built a decade ago, and which has worked perfectly (i.e. did what I want it to do) until three days ago, when I finally and reluctantly changed to Win10. Moreover, I'd accept it happily were it not for Win10's built-in screensaver and desktop functions also appearing to handle .lnks badly, which they didn't in Win7.

It feels like a global setting that defaults to the wrong option, somewhere, but I don't know where I'd even begin looking for such.

Excellent! Definitely worth looking at that; I shall soon be able to pretend I'm still on Win7 a little more convincingly

I bought a license for my Win10 installation from EcoKeys; activation went without a hitch, and the OS is currently activated per its own monitoring. I really should have moved earlier, I suppose, but I've long learned not to fix that which ain't broke.

CannedAir said:

CLIPPED
I cannot be the only human ever to use Win10 who's run across this problem, but web searches have proven useless. The few threads I've found elsewhere, including on MS's on Knowledgebase, go nowhere. What the heck's going on, and has anyone ever found a solution?
Cheers!

Same here, only recently did I surrendered to the deprecation/regression trend of Windows 8+, right when windows is accelerating in that reduction of user ergonomic degree of freedom choice, or user control over own local OS cheese (this not about moving the cheese elsewhere, it is about puff of smoke disappearance. Thinking of windows 11, from the crumbs I gathered.

I find that to get a lot of the same routine procedures without micromanagement, in general is becoming increasingly harder, compared to windows 7. The split in software ecosystems between win32 API real software, which was all there was in windows 7, seems to have been the elephant since windows 8. People complained about telemetry, so it seems windows 11, is not even asking anymore as many questions. There is an increase reduction is user control of own visual real estate daily work environment.

I did have exposure before, while supporting others remotely, with windows 10, but I could recover from such ordeal, when going back to my rig, with its more cognitive friendly OS that windows 7 was.
But eventually, the general consenting or jumping on bandwagon (IDK):

• all sorts of software, going with the flow, that I still enjoy

• Chrome counting the days to my doom.. in red.

• etc...

.... And I got brainwashed into surrendering. And I sympathize with your ordeal.

Generalizing:
Your "this" could apply to many past productive features having gone the micromanagement workaround is your friend (not really). this or that.. We are consenting, so it must be good.

Possible caveat: security threat trumps all further analysis or risk assessment. It should induce your consent.
This is for you own security. I have read^* that all sort of inoffensive looking user local OS file system link related files could be wolves in sheep clothing. And forcing you to micromanage and look your attention daily resource to do such many more chores than usual, might be for your own security. So, cutting OS pass-through powers of other OS features of ergonomic nature (for the mind and productivity and user-machine interface efficiency), would be a lazy and developper-hours commitment cost cutting solution. This is win win for some people I think. Not for the many user sub-populations but still each in their own, arguably small cases (qualitatively), that would have written almost the same post as you did, but with a different "this" problem and same perplexity: "But why?" Why is wasting our attention or mind resources in more micromanagement some kind of progress.

And as usual, clever exceptions from under the surface, seems you found one. So much abuse of unknowable. Even open sources components can be coopted, if one just adds enough unknowable factors under or on top. This is marketing science, or my theory of that technology of isolated consent manufacturing. The fear button. So, in short. Links are bad. Make them dumber.

"This" specific problem solution suggestion lead
I suggest you convert all your folder links to symbolic links. There are software, well documented that do not require command line rite of passage to get back user control of own environment.

Search for "Link Shell Extension" for creating new folder symbolic links. They are going to be distinguishavle from dumb links that became dumber, being the overlay curved arrow being of green color by default (or red for hardlinks on same drive).
However, you may have other software that likes to put own marking on folders (elsewhere), and the registry has only a small number of slots (and priority encoding, that some software might use to be on top of others). Symbolic links are the most robust links to use if you have many drives and many partitions. As they can cross those barriers. And should act as tunnels without blocking for many OS and API using software. Those are established parts of the unix file management system, from a long time ago. They are also used in some variations by MS own backward compatibility with XP offical hacks, that still persist in windows 10 I think. ."document and settings", remember?

To nail the idea of security threat "rumor". (well existence case is not, but risk suggestion is rumor at this point).

URL desktop links are big object non-grata now too. For the same reason.. Although, one would find plausible that the wild internets would be even more likely to have sizable but never asked risk quantity for all our users case problems of productivity obstacles. So much standardisation from the web making its way to our local OS, for our own security. App store model holy grail. Black hole, inexorable progress. Chrome and edge even more so, you need to change policy under the hood to get back to your automatisms, while you can keep your individual flow at higher attention precious resource spending for your own needs. There is a tectonic level war for our attention control, and complete merchandizing objectification of it, it seems, and we are losing it, because we like to feel connected, and we assume that technology is always getting better for our progress.

Conclusion or summary: just the mechanistic pillar hypotheses.
Building blocks of the population consent dynamics, in this angle of explanation of mine.

1) Threat existence proof without the necessary conditions spelled out, in the marketing psychology linguistic science (advertising industry or department of software industry and OS that goes with it). That is a my hypothesis of a main factor that is let loose without critical thinking. And I think no intent is needed for its persistent influence.

2) The deprecation thing and user case argument, is another psychological pressure point being pushed. We want to belong so bad to the other people we can identify to, as also using the same tools we are. Something like that.

I hope I could generate a possible set of explanations as response to your questioning. I had to generalize your "this" a bit.
I can delete my mechanistic hypothesis. It might not be on topic here. But does it help understand the apparently not very "sagacious" trend?

^*
Critical thinking gone exasperated, or note at end of page:
I have read more than once and heard. But I never could not verify or read about any attempt to verify or quantify, as there is little demand for real risk assessment in the security industry. Hypothesis of driving mechanics:
The software products, the platform OS under that, and marketing technology wielders consultants or in charge, might synergize toward keeping threat level for each of us at pure qualitative level. All data analysis would need active funding, and it would be cutting down support from under the arguments that seem to convince us without need for quantitative basis, taking into account the full population user case structure (there too staying qualitative makes for sufficient consenting behavior: we would not know if at risk population quantity was negligible, or if the small user case sub-pop of each deprecated feature was just below 50%.

There are almost idiomatic expressions or reasoning reflexes it seems, in the ambient discourse in support of many software trends in that dismissal of diverse user case feature needs arguing for feature set reduction. If enough paid writing generating people keep repeating it, and web software commenting and reviewing propagating such linguistics all over the no distance internets. I think the bullshit industry is having a blast. Yep, security risk.. Someone should analyse all the buzz words we stop being able do critical thinking about the sentences containing them. Wait, maybe that is the marketing science 101 course.

END OF CRITICAL ESSAY (English not my native language, btw).

Sorry for the delayed (and brief) reply - thank you very much, I'll look into this over the festive period!

If one has things they did not expect to deal with in Windows 10 your really not going to enjoy what MS has done with Windows 11.
I have old programs dating from Win XD that my programs would still run on in Win 10, not so on Win 11, and that is just the starters of how MS has in their minds made Win 11 a much better OS not anything one can do about this but deal with it as it now comes installed on about all the new computers.