On third installation of same MSI package, the shortcuts are lowercased

[MikeFarrington]

I've got a very strange issue that took me a while to hunt down. In testing my installer, I've been using a Windows Sandbox (a feature I learned about from watching RobM's YouTube videos -- I'm loving this feature). It too me a while to reproduce this problem because I spent a lot of time undoing new edits to my project and re-installing but to no avail.

I eventually discovered that this happens on the 3rd installation of the same package (or subsequent package without upgrades). So, I create a package and install it onto the sandbox. On the first install, the casing of my shortcut text is correct. If I uninstall and then install the same package again, the casing of my shortcuts is still correct. However, after uninstalling it a 2nd time and installing it a third time, the casing of my shortcuts is now all lowercase. All subsequent installations have lowercase shortcuts.

I have repeated this many times with a fresh sandbox. My product name does not appear in lowercase anywhere within my installer project.

My project has been stripped down to little more than file delivery at the moment as I simultaneously rework the installer for WiX v4 and my app to .NET 6. I'm not launching my app. There's nothing that stores and recalls information from the registry or anything at the moment.

[MikeFarrington]

After some more investigation, this strange situation with my Sandbox is unrelated to WiX Toolset.

In the Sandbox, if I create a file on the desktop called "HelloWorld.txt", then copy it once to the Downloads folder, the casing is correct. However, if I delete the target file and repeat the copy, the target file is now all lowercase as "helloworld.txt". This misbehavior of the sandbox filesystem appears to bleed over into the creation of the shortcut files (which I can only assume are extracted from to a temporary location on disk before being moved to the target folder).

It is the strangest thing.

If I rename the file on the desktop to be HelloWorlds.txt, then copy once more to Downloads, the casing is fine. Then on a 2nd copy, the target file is all lowercase.

I am closing this.