Understanding "MSI Warning 1946: Property Shortcut Could Not Be Set" and How to Fix It

What’s the Most Likely Scenario?

At first, the error did not initially appear. None of our test machines, whether running Windows 10 or 11, seemed to trigger the error, even with various MSI installer kits.

After some digging online, we came across a suggestion that PowerToys might be involved.

What we observed was that indeed, the presence of PowerToys on the system did cause the issue, however, this does not apply to all OS versions. Specifically, the error appeared on Windows 11 with the 23h2 build:

If you’re running Windows 11 23h2 with PowerToys installed, you might encounter this warning during an MSI installation:

What’s the Root Cause?

The issue doesn’t seem to be with Windows Installer but rather with PowerToys.PowerLauncher.exe, a PowerToys quick launcher feature.

In the past, during the transition from XP/Vista to Windows 7, the issue occurred when a shortcut property was set in the MsiShortcutProperty table of the MSI. The main reason for this behavior was that Windows 8 and later versions introduced new properties:

• System.AppUserModel.NoPinToStartOnInstall
• System.AppUserModel.IsDualMode
• System.ItemNameSortOverride

These properties were not available in Windows 7, which led to the warning. However, in this case, note that the error points to a different property:

- System.AppUser.Model.ID

PowerToys.PowerLauncher.exe can interfere with Windows Installer and cause Warning 1946 because it accesses shortcut files (.lnk) during its indexing process. When the installer tries to set properties on these shortcut files, PowerLauncher.exe may block the operation, resulting in the warning.

Potential Impact and Solution

The good news is that this is only a warning, and the installation will complete successfully without any functional impact.

However, it may affect user perception, especially for non-technical users, who might believe something is not working correctly or that the installation has failed.

In terms of solution, there are a couple of things that you can do:

1. The most straightforward fix is to uninstall PowerToys to prevent further warnings when installing MSI packages.
2. Keep your device up to date with both PowerToys updates and OS updates and hopefully, future releases may resolve this issue.
3. If you are a software packager or an ISV, you can access the MsiShortcutProperty table in the MSI and remove the problematic entries to eliminate the warning.