Is there a way to change the name of a Start menu link name using a Custom Action

Question

Hello,

We are localizing our application and need to change the name displayed in the Start menu based on the current UI culture. We would like to do this using a Custom Action during the installation. We are using Windows Installer deployment projects and do not plan on using any third party deployment tools.

Thank you!

Answer 1

A CustomAction cannot modify the contents of a database (it is read-only while executing). You'd have to take over the entire creation of the shortcut. I would recommend a better Windows Installer creation tool before doing that since you'll need to write a lot of code to handle the rollback scenarios for instal and uninstall plus reference counting.

There are better tools out there than the Visual Studio deployment projects. Some like the WiX toolset are free (fully featured but more work).