executable behaving differently when launched via shortcut?

[jim enright]

I have a VC++ (VS2022) dialog based application that uses third party charting software(AES Chart Director).
The application is iterative and after each iteration updates a chart with a new data point. What is driving me nuts is this:

If I run the app from within the VS2022 IDE in debugging mode or without debugging mode the app displays the charts correctly after each iteration.

If I go directly to the executable in the debug directory and launch it wit a double click the app displays the charts correctly after each iteration.

However, if I set up a shortcut on the Windows10 task bar and launch it in any manner (open, run as administrator, or just clicking on the task bar icon) the chart only appears after the last iteration – ie not after any of the non-terminal iterations.

Anyone have any insight - many thanks in advance.

[VictorN]

I would first check all the paths used in your solution, particularly the ones concerning the third party parts.

[ovidiucucu]

I can guess you are using or passing to the third party library paths relative to the application/process current directory (e.g. ".\data", "..\data" or just the file name). The current process directory is not obviously the same as the directory in which the application executable is located. Moreover, it can be changed at run-time. For example, if launch the application from Visual Studio, the current process directory is set to the solution folder.

The solution is to provide the full path (e.g. "c:\work\theapp\data"). Of course, hardcoding paths is a bad idea, but you can construct them at run-time. Depending of what practically must be achieved:

• call GetModuleFileName to find the folder in which the executable is located
• or use a special (known) folder, as for example AppData
• or show a Select Folder dialog, then provide the path selected.

I have attached here a demo project which hopefully can help you: PathsInfo.zip