Try using the shortfilename version of the filename:  NEWLOG~1.PDF

One other thing you should bear in mind is that the API call which creates the shortcut needs access to the file referenced as target at the time the shortcut is created. Since a W: drive is referenced, if your app is deployed by any service based installer, the W: drive will not be visible and you will have problems with shortcut creation.

There are two solutions:

1. Instead of creating a shortcut, copy the .LNK shortcut file to the appropriate location. As this is a simple file copy operation, the shortcut contents will be unchanged to those you set during testing.

2. Install a launcher file to the local machine - eg a batch file or a wisescript EXE (the latter is easier to run silently). Have this launcher check for the existence of the file and then launch it if found. This way your shortcut points to the local file so creation is no issue, and the launcher guarantees a clean recovery if the W: mapping is not present or the file is missing on W:

One final thing - PDF files are regarded as a security risk as they can carry a payload. Running a PDF file from a network location can be treated as a security risk by many antivirus programs so you need to test this will not be an issue in your environment.

I don't see how using a property is any different to hard coding the value, as the property has to have a value at install time, and if the value is invalid when the shortcut is created, then you are going to have problems.

However, you may have a point where advertised shortcuts are involved as the shortcut links into the locally cached MSI so that key path checking can take place when the app is launched.

However, you cannot create an advertised shortcut to a file which is not installed by the MSI, and I'm assuming that a file on the W: drive is unlikely to have been installed by the MSI in question, so we are talking about a non-advertised shortcut. If I recall correctly, the API which creates a non-advertised shortcut interrogates the target file so that it can extract the icon information and check that the file is there. As a test, try creating a shortcut to a non-existent file and see what happens.

If your issue is solved do let everyone know by marking a solution or by letting everyone know what you did to get this solved. It helps everyone..