Windows 10: Anyone with an in depth knowledge of how program installations work?

Warning - a bit long.

So id say im a core user moreso than a power user. A hobbyist/gamer perhaps. Know substantially more than your average user, but substantially less than someone in the IT field.

Ive dug up a bit of "maybe" relevant information on my issue - but I want to ascertain its potential veracity before i go wasting time and mucking with the registry if its unlikely to garner a return so to speak.

Here's my issue.

Its actually twofold. One is more aesthetic and triggers my ocd The other is more functional/practical. Plus who doesnt want a pc where everything works as it should?

I run Synapse 3. Razer's keyboard/mouse/macro software. It, like its predecessor allows for profile switching automatically. You can map keys, and when it senses xx game loads, you'll get a windows notifcation its changing profiles - and do such.

If you clicked "link games" it would scan your games, and give you the option of which game to link. At some point, it went from finding all my games, to finding all my games AND all my roms which I had installed as shortcuts into steam. This went from a few dozen games, to a few thousand. It was messy and obnoxious, but until razer added a requested means to filter or limit what or where it was scanning, I wasnt concerned.

Not too long thereafter, it began finding no games at all. After countless complete purges of synapse, and several updates by razer, and several windows updates, and sfcs and disms,and driver updates... I had finally given up.

I recently decided to revisit it, and did some more digging. It turns out, it will scan for your games and give you a list - complete with a thumbnail/icon/art/grid type image representing the game to add. That was coming up blank/with nothing. However, a "dont see your game" button is present. If you click said button - your given a list of path's with executables at the end.

Now the majority of said list is irrelevant stuff. 7zip, adobe, etc. Of course i dont need to link those to a keyboard profile. However, going through the list more thoroughly, it was only showing games that were A) present in the add/remove programs list and B) had their icon intact.

I tested this by using that button to add overwatch and link it to a profile. It worked. A button beyond "game not seen?" is present. Browse. It allows you to navigate to your game via explorer and select the exe. So i tried navigating to World of Warcraft. Tried to add the exe, nothing. Literally did zero.

Here's where it gets wonky beyond the scope of my computing acumen

I initially thought this was due to some of my games being on my system/ssd (very few) and most being installed on a seperate hard disk. Not the case. However I DID remove the "separate hard disk" installed games from the add/remove program list entirely so i could keep track of what was directly on the SSD. Likely a mistake looking back, but ill address that at a later point if its even addressable. For now I simply want to fix the games that ARE on the list and their not being found or at worst, not being add'able manually.

Hopefully this wasnt too long, and concise enough to get across the what's and why's. I'm not sure if these games "icons" disappeared in the add/remove programs list due to running ccleaner, due to a windows version update, due to restoring a backup image at some point for some reason. No idea exactly when let alone how they went from the game's icon, to the default icon, much less what else it affected on a structural level. (aka if its specifically the art not being there (unlikely) or some other change thats causing it to not be picked up, much less add'able manually).

So the aesthetic portion is me trying to add the artwork back to said games/programs. This seems do'able ala

https://www.advancedinstaller.com/fo...ic.php?t=26695

and

https://www.sevenforums.com/general-...-icon-fix.html

however im not confident this will solve the issue.

Is anybody familiar with synapse 3 or with how the windows installer adds games/recognizes them etc? or how synapse might be scanning for them versus whats missing/not allowing them to be found or even added manually? A recommendation for something/somewhere i should check, or where I can continue my process of elimination?

Should i proceed with the aforementioned links and try re-adding the artwork and see if that fixes it? I cant see how it would, I just noticed that the games not being found also seem to not be displaying proper icons in the uninstall programs list.

Sorry for the book. I dont even have a TLDR version for ya lol, most of its pretty relevant.

:)

 

Color bit depth is at 6-bit on Display properties of Windows 10 pro

Try the below suggested steps and check if the suggested options are available to change the Color bit Depth value

1. Right click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. Expand the Display, and then highlight the Change resolution.
3. On the right side, check if there is 8 bpc listed under
   Output color depth.
4. You may select 8 bpc and restart the device to witness the changes.

Muralidhar

Microsoft Community Moderator

 

Windows 10 infinite restart black screen


The tutorials provided are just a list of troubleshooting steps. Use only the steps which apply to you.

Since none of the troubleshooting steps here worked, I'd suggest you do a Clean install.

John

 

Why did the startup window get cleared?

I didn't missed any step, the list was gone and gone , even after using lot of programs the programs were not listed in that list.