Create StartMenu Entry - c++

Question

i try to create link to file in StartMenu folder, my code:
bool createStartMenuEntry(string targetPath, string name){
std::wstring stemp = s2ws(targetPath);
LPCWSTR target = stemp.c_str();
WCHAR startMenuPath[MAX_PATH];
HRESULT result = SHGetFolderPathW(NULL, CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS, NULL, 0, startMenuPath);
if (SUCCEEDED(result)) {
std::wstring linkPath = std::wstring(startMenuPath) + s2ws(name);
LPCWSTR link = linkPath.c_str();
//TEST MESSAGE!!!
MessageBox(NULL, LPCSTR(target), LPCSTR(link), MB_ICONWARNING);
CoInitialize(NULL);
IShellLinkW* shellLink = NULL;
result = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_ShellLink, NULL, CLSCTX_ALL, IID_IShellLinkW, (void**)&shellLink);
if (SUCCEEDED(result)) {
shellLink->SetPath(target);
//shellLink->SetDescription(L"Shortcut Description");
shellLink->SetIconLocation(target, 0);
IPersistFile* persistFile;
result = shellLink->QueryInterface(IID_IPersistFile, (void**)&persistFile);
if (SUCCEEDED(result)) {
result = persistFile->Save(link, TRUE);
persistFile->Release();
}
else {
return false;
}
shellLink->Release();
}
else {
return false;
}
}
else {
return false;
}
return true;
}
String to widestring conversion:
std::wstring s2ws(const std::string& s)
{
int len;
int slength = (int)s.length() + 1;
len = MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, s.c_str(), slength, 0, 0);
wchar_t* buf = new wchar_t[len];
MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, s.c_str(), slength, buf, len);
std::wstring r(buf);
delete[] buf;
return r;
}
When I call my func like createStartMenuEntry("E:\\file.exe" , "File"), in test message I have only first letters of path and shortcut isn't created, I think, problem in unicode conversion.

Answer 1

There are multiple problems here:
MessageBox(NULL, LPCSTR(target), LPCSTR(link), MB_ICONWARNING); is all kinds of wrong. You should not be casting strings like this. If you are compiling without UNICODE defined, you must use MessageBoxW() to display a LPCWSTR string. You get a single character because "c:\\" as a Unicode string is 'c',0,':',0,'\\',0,0,0 in memory, and that is the same as a "c" string when treated as a narrow ANSI string.
You ignore the result of persistFile->Save()! You also ignore the results of SetPath() and SetIconLocation().
A normal user cannot write to CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS, only administrators have write access to that folder, because it is shared by all users. If you are not planning to require UAC elevation, you must write to CSIDL_PROGRAMS instead.
You should not use std::string to store paths, only std::wstring and WCHAR*/LP[C]WSTR, because paths that contain certain Unicode characters cannot be represented in a narrow ANSI string.