You can eliminate the use of this middle-man tool by creating Desktop or Quick Launch toolbar shortcuts to the actual program easily, but it takes some research. The first step is to figure out what application is being run when you click on the functions of this HP dashboard, this is done by watching your Task Manager and watching for a new image name to appear under processes. This is most likely the executable's filename so search for the imagename (i.e. hpqkygrp.exe) to find out where this file lives.You'll need to rename imagename.exe to something else, I'd suggest _magename.exe (_pqkygrp.exe as an example) and copy this program to the folder you found that imagename in and rename it to the original application's name.
Click on that HP Photo & Imaging Director button again, this will open a dialog with the complete command line, copy this command line and create a shortcut in either your Quick Launch toolbar, or on the desktop.Repeat this process for each of the buttons in this launcer application. It may work for other applications too, but this was my own challenge and I figured I'd share it with you.
Remember to rename the program back to what it was called originally, and keep WinEcho.exe for the next time you need it.
2 comments:
Thank you for sharing this. It still works today (2013) with Windows 8.1 and a current version of the trashy HP Software. But for some reason it is not enough to create a shortcut with the output of WinEcho on the desktop. Pqkygrp.exe still complains about improper command line arguments. However, putting the output of WinEcho in a batch-file does the trick.
I'm very happy to have been helpful. Thanks for the note.
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