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I'm developing a product with multiple different program that are launched through a java wrapper from a central launcher application. With the default Windows 7 taskbar options, each program should appear with its own icon on the taskbar.

This basic functionality stops working once I launch my application on a computer with Windows 7 installed in a different language. All of a sudden, my programs appear grouped together under one icon, even though the programs have different names and different icons. This probably means there's some sort of bug in my localization process.

Unfortunately, I haven't the faintest idea of where I should begin looking for this bug, since I can't find any information on how exactly Windows 7 decides whether icons are to be stacked or not. Is it the process name? The process location? Are other launch options taken into acocunt?

Does anyone know if there's documentation for this behavior?

To Recap:

  • Windows 7 Language Foo, Application Language Foo: Icons are properly separated.
  • Windows 7 Language Foo, Application Language Bar: Icons are properly separated.
  • Windows 7 Language Bar, Application Language Foo: Icons are stacked.
  • Windows 7 Language Bar, Application Langauge Bar: Icons are stacked.

1 Answer 1

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The taskbar buttons are grouped based on AppID. If you don't explicitly give it an AppID, it's auto-generated based on the process name. Raymond Chen has a post with good information on this here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/08/20/10341464.aspx

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  • It would be helpful to post the relevant information from that external source into your answer.
    – Ramhound
    Apr 1, 2015 at 14:18
  • Interesting. I don't believe an explicit AppID is set in my application, so this is probably the correct answer. Any ideas as to why an OS Language results in non-uniquely automatically generated AppIds?
    – Alex Pruss
    Apr 1, 2015 at 14:39
  • @Ramhound: My summary before the link is the immediately relevant info from the article, but the whole article is relevant to Alex, since it describes how to actually setup the AppIDs to do what he wants. I didn't think it made sense to paste in the entire text of the article, hence the link to it.
    – Keith
    Apr 1, 2015 at 16:31
  • @AlexPruss: That I'm not sure on, unfortunately. I don't have any experience with setting AppIDs across localized versions of Windows, sorry :(
    – Keith
    Apr 1, 2015 at 16:32
  • Thanks for the answer Keith, your answer and the article were very useful!
    – Alex Pruss
    Apr 2, 2015 at 7:48

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