I was playing around with Windows 7 on my work machine and got the Windows XP Mode working. I loved how installing an application on the virtual machine creates a “virtual application” link in the host Windows 7 environment. However, while the first application I installed worked perfectly, the second failed to autopublish a link to Windows 7.
Turns out that you need to have the install link available for all users in order to autopublish. So I just dragged and dropped a shortcut into Documents and Settings\All Users\Programs and logged off the virtual machine. Voila, the link autopublished.
In the future, I will make sure to install applications for “all users” to avoid having to do this step. Someone mentioned that they thought the autopublish only worked for Microsoft Installer based applications, but I am skeptical. Instead I am betting that certain non-Microsoft installers are more likely to default to installing for the current user/and/or the suggestor of this idea chose “install for current user” on these applications (as was in the case of my second, non-publishing install).
