icons in Windows Vista

[Axiom28]

Hello everyone
Just joined this forum and have a question to ask regading an application
I built using VB.net. The application works fine at home on my XP machine, however, I wanted to test and use it at work where I have a PC using Windows Vista. What happens is the app works but the icon in the Start menu seems to be randomly selected and not the one I gave it. Although the icon appears at the top left of the form. AltTAB gives me something completely
different. Also if I have opened another program prior to starting mine the
icon shown in the task bar is that of the previous program. How do I fix this?

[Dököll]

Greetings, Axiom28!

Not sure why you are having this problem. I do not use Vista... Have you considered building the app on the vista machine?

Sending over to .NET for a closer look...

Hope you find out the problem though.

Dököll

[Curtis Rutland]

Moved to Answers instead of Insights.

[Axiom28]

Hello, I haven't had any answers on this. However, someone suggested that
it might have to do something with the resolution of the icons used in Vista, or do I need multiple icons e.g. 16 x 16, 32 x 32 and more. Can anyone confirm this or not. I also noticed recently that my program when minimised picks up
the icon of the last opened program. i.e. If I open Excel then the minimised button has an excel icon.
Looking to getting an answer to this one

[nukefusion]

I would start by making sure that the icon file contains an image in the following sizes (recommended by Microsoft): 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, and 256x256.

I've got Vista on my laptop at home and seem to remember that alt-tab uses bigger images there than it does on my XP machine here in the office. Maybe your missing one of these larger icon sizes?

[Plater]

I was just going to say that yes, it is most likely that it is an issue with not having the correct image sizes stored in your icon file.
Don't forget about 64x64 either

[Ramk]

@Plater
hi Plater, Im not fully convinced with the answers.In general whenever an image of the required size is not found, Windows will automatically create it. This is particularly true in case of colour, wherein the requested color is not available, Windows will give the best matching colour based on underlying graphics hardware.
One ex is that, if you select the large images option in VS, it zooms the icons to fit the toolbar area. I don't know completely about the problem. But
I recommend to check the icons loading, releasing in the code.
Try using Window+Tab to see the winodw list(the same problem is recurring). I got astonished because, the questioner has complained it is showing the last open icon when minimized.
Can't we solve it???

[MrMancunian]

As suggested by Dököll, did you try to build it on a Vista environment? Furthermore, how do you deploy your application? Is it an one-click-manifest application or did you create an exe/msi?

Steven

[Plater]

It has been my experiance that when windows cannot find the correct image, it uses a default one. Which has been many the case in .NET applications.

And if you look through VS, you see that those icons actually do exist in the various sizes, the zooming is not done "on the fly"