beta New voice recognition feature needs write access?

[Overload86]

Hi everyone, great job on the remarkable program and thanks for all the cool new features.

On to my problem: Launchbox is working perfectly, but as soon as I try to enable voice recognition (either in the program or in the config manually) Launchbox does not want to start anymore and instead
shows an error message, stating I wouldn't have write permissions in the launchbox folder (which is untrue) and the access to path "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start menu\Programs" was denied
(of course it was, and launchbox is not installed there, I have it installed on "D:\!MediaPC\Launchbox")

Launching with admin permissions doesn't help either.

For reference, my system specs:

AMD FX-6300 OC @4.1GHz
AMD Radeon 270x @stock
8GB DD3-1600 RAM
Windows 10 Pro
2 HDDs, 1 SSD

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by Overload86

[DOS76]

you can't install there move it to your doc folder like they suggested or a separate data drive depending upon your setup after moving it it should work fine. It should be totally portable just cut and paste to another folder.

[Overload86]

Thanks for trying to help, but you didn't read carefully enough. I have it installed somewhere else, I have also moved the folder around to no avail. Also: see 2nd screenshot for location of the folder!

But honestly thanks for taking the time to answer, hope to find a fix soon, since voice control sounds awesome as all heck

[DOS76]

Sorry about that I see if I would have taken a little a little more time I would have seen all of that. Have you tried navigating to the folder the computer is listing and see if there is a LB folder there.

[Overload86]

Yes I have, unfortunately there is no such folder. But I'm not surprised, since that folder is where the shortcuts from the windows start menu are saved... so Launchbox should never even attempt to save something there ^^

Proof attached ;P

[Jason Carr]

Thank you @Overload86. I am working on this.

[Jason Carr]

FYI, even though this message suggests that it's writing to the folder, it's not. It's just trying to read the folder only in order to detect the applications that you have installed for the voice recognition. Still working on a resolution though.

[Overload86]

You mean it's trying to determine if I have other voice recognition software installed that may conflict with it? Or do I need to install your voice recognition software separately? I was under the impression you implemented another piece of software you began to write a while back into LaunchBox.

Regardless: As soon as I set ActivateVoiceRecognition to true in the launchbox.xml, LaunchBox refuses to start, instead displaying that error and then shutting down ^^

Edith says: I do not have a LaunchBox folder in the start menu, in fact: if the installer offered the option I opted out of it, since that is what I do with all installers  Maybe that's the problem?

Edited September 4, 2016 by Overload86
Extra observation

[Jason Carr]

No, the LaunchBox voice recognition is able to launch applications that appear in the start menu. So it's just trying to come up with a list of those applications. As far as I know permissions should never be disallowed for read access to that folder, but it is possible to change those permissions.

I am adding some error handling to this to just ignore it, or pop up a message if debug mode is enabled for the voice recognition.

[Overload86]

@Jason Carr

I completely reinstalled Windows 10 just 2 weeks ago and can assure you that I did not change any permissions on those folders ^^ I did however have to change some on Drive D, but that is another matter entirely. Since then I have also freshly installed LaunchBox from scratch on the fresh C drive in a new folder @ C:\Games\LaunchBox just so I can rule out the possibility of wrong permissions.

Without knowing anything about your source code used here, I got the idea that MAYBE this has to do with me using a german version of Win10? Since the error message says "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programme" which is kinda jumbled... in english Windows versions it is "Start Menu\Programs" in german Windows it should normally be "Startmenü\Programme".

Having said that, I know that the folder name is still "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\" but translated through one of those desktop.ini files floating around everywhere in translated Windows versions...

[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21782

that's responsible for the translation.

On the other hand I can totally see Microsoft restricting even read access of that folder outside of an installer (which doesn't run at user level I think? I never dove far enough into this to know for sure) because why would that interest any program? (But don't worry, I would probably have done the same, if I needed to know what programs the voice assistant should be able to launch).

Since I can't test it yet, but I am oh so curious: How does your implementation handle "strange" game names, like for example "Aero the Acro-Bat"? And on that same note, do you plan on implementing an extra field in the game properties, to choose an "alternate" name for voice search? E.G.: "Link's Awakening" "Zelda: Link's Awakening" maybe even "Zelda 1 on GameBoy"... or "Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island" "Yoshi's Island" "Mario World 2" "Super Mario World 2"

Sorry for the wall of text, pretty much just spitballing here.

[Jason Carr]

Hi Overload, I'm using the SHGetSpecialFolderPath Win32 API call to retrieve the CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU value. It'd be pretty strange if that was returning the wrong value; is it really pointing to a nonexistent folder?

Permissions-wise, I know that on US English versions of Windows 10 (and previous versions) that folder always has read permissions for all users, so all I can figure is that it might be different for other language versions. Pretty strange. The folder is used to display all of the icons in the start menu that are displayed for all users, so it seems to me like the traditional Start menu wouldn't even work properly without those permissions. But who knows, Windows 10 does things pretty differently now I'm sure.

Originally I had added the ability to open a game by any number of the words in the game's title, which I'll probably add back once we fix the performance issues.