In Windows 7, how come the programs I pin to the taskbar never actually start up when I click on them?

) October 17th, 2013

I realized a while ago that I can pin shortcuts to the taskbar on the desktop, which was really cool and I figured it would be a lot easier than sifting through my files to find the .exe file.

Mind you, these are games that I have pinned. I have Firefox pinned but that works fine, so does Chrome. But for some reason when I click on my games or emulators, nothing happens. It gives me a black screen and I have to bring up task manager to get out of it. Interestingly enough, task manager doesn’t say that there’s something wrong with the program.

My games and emulators still work fine when I go through my files, find the .exe file and boot them from there, but I have no idea why they should have a problem booting from the taskbar shortcut.

Depending on the game, sometimes I get this error message about IDirectDraw 7 Set DisplayMode failed. Then it says make sure your video card supports this mode. But the games work fine otherwise, so there’s no problem with my video card rendering the game.

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3 Answers

that’s really weird. my only guess would be that, if windows thinks another instance of a program is already running (say, for example if an emu loaded up on startup in the background), then it might cause the symptom you’re talking about.

Also… you should run a full Malwarebytes scan and see if any malware is causing it.

other than that, I am not sure but I think i’ll dig around online about your issue because I’d like to know too out of curiosity – simply because the fact that the apps load fine through other routes, just not the taskbar. Post an update if you figure it out and fix it.

gambitking (4206

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And does it work if you just start the application, then right-click their application icon in the task bar, and select “Pin to taskbar” or something like that? And if that doesn’t, can you look up the application in your start menu and drag them to the taskbar?

Vincentt (8094

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