Start8 search displays duplicates for programs

from Stardock Forums

In Start8 1.03, "Search programs and files" displays duplicate information for certain apps such as Outlook.  If you search for "outlook", Start8 displays:

  • outlook
  • Outlook 2013

The first result is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\outlook.exe

and the second result is:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2013\Outlook 2013.lnk

Can Start8 be configured to only show the Start Menu .lnk?  I doubt people want to launch outlook.exe directly.

 

start8
2,929 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Unfortunately due to a serious bug in Windows Defender on Windows 8, querying the target of a shortcut can result in significant delays which is why we are minimizing where we do that.

However as the search results tend to be few at that point it may be possible for us to do the lookup only when we have an exe in the search results and I will see if we can do that for the next update.

Is there any harm to running the exe vs the shortcut?  It would seem to me all you have is two links to the same application either of which would work fine.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I can't think of any harm in running outlook.exe vs. the shortcut in this case.  Having only one choice would just simplify things for non-technical people.

I wonder how Windows 7 does it.  The brute force method would be to follow the targets of the shortcuts in the Start menu, and remove the associated .exe from the results.  I wonder if there's a better way though.

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting be789, reply 2
I can't think of any harm in running outlook.exe vs. the shortcut in this case.  Having only one choice would just simplify things for non-technical people.

I wonder how Windows 7 does it.  The brute force method would be to follow the targets of the shortcuts in the Start menu, and remove the associated .exe from the results.  I wonder if there's a better way though.

 
End of be789's quote

I suspect thats exactly how it works.  If it were not for Defender having this problem we would have done so automatically. But as I say because the results are so short at that point (typically 3-5 results), even if the lookup costs us say 100ms it should only cost a total of 0.3-0.5 seconds worst case and it would only impact the programs search rather than the other searches so I will see if we can get it to filter it in the final 1.1 build.

Reply #5 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

I am having the same issue. Outlook appears 3 times in the Start8 menu search, in fact. 

1) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\outlook.exe (shows as "outlook")

2) C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office 2013\Outlook 2013 (shortcut, shows as "Outlook 2013")

3) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\outlook.exe (duplicate, but shows as "OUTLOOK")

I think this is a usability issue. Yes, all 3 shortcuts work, but it looks real messy and just makes you wonder why search is returning results outside of "standard libraries" even though I have the correct option set from within the start8 config. I would much prefer to restrict the results to just the start menu and nominated libraries. I wouldn't have expected to see results from my programs folder, though what is a "standard library" does not seem to be defined, so perhaps that is considered a "standard library"?. 

Could you please confirm what is considered to be a standard library?

In any case, I totally agree with aggybong that we should have the option to filter out duplicate results, even if it does incur a slight delay. Or at least have some control over which libraries are included in the search results.

Despite this "bug" I have to say this is a great product. Nice work guys!