Why does my app name appear in 8.3 notation in Task Manager

[Art Araya]

My app's name appears in all caps and in DOS 8.3 shortname notation when running and viewed in Task Manager.  Why is this?  What settings do I need to change to have my app's name appear correctly?

[Roger Garstang]

You are probably looking at the process name, they are usually just the 8.3 names.  The Application tab will show you the name.  Sometimes you need a Version Resource with other names too to get a name to appear in the Applications Tab or in things like ZoneAlarm's Program list.  Windows also uses the Internal name you give in the resource sometimes for restrictive run operations, etc, so someone can't just rename an app and be able to run it even though you restricted it.

[Art Araya]

Hi Roger,

You are correct that it appears correctly on the Applications tab and that it appears as 8.3 on the Processes tab.  But it is the ONLY application that appears this way on the Processes tab.  Do you know how I can correct this?

TIA

[Roger Garstang]

Everything in my list are 8.3 names, only one that isn't is System Idle Process, if you mean that it is the only one in uppercase while the others are lower, you just have to rename it.  Sometimes Windows does a mixed case correction on names that are all lowercase or all uppercase too so it may appear lowercase in Explorer, but really be stored in upper.  There is a registry hack to enable allowing uppercase names that turns off the autocorrecting Windows does, but other than a Version resource or that there isn't much else to do.

[Haakon Birkeland]

All Google Desktop apps are also in LFN
bert

[Roger Garstang]

Are those the only one in LFN?  Could be cause they are loaded from the web or something...never played with their stuff myself.  For some reason I just don't trust them.  They have a great search engine that I use every day, but there is just something about them...

I actually did a test and just renaming my filename and the Process tab shows up to 15 characters...probably a 16 character buffer with a nul.  Adding/changing Version Info/Resources didn't do anything.  What OS are you using?  I know XP and 2000 have a little different list with User names and such since it has the Fast User Switching and it has a Networking and Users tab sometimes.  Then of course the other OS variations are totally different.

[Haakon Birkeland]

1 file shows up as 22 characters long. XP Home

Bert

[Art Araya]

Very strange -  renaming it did the trick.  But here's the strange part, I renamed it to exactly what it was before.  No actual change was made.  But now instead of UPPER case 8.3 notation it appears as mixed case LFN.  Bizarre.  I guess I just need to remember to manually change the name of the EXE before distributing my app...