Links to games created by Windows when delphi projects create exes with specific names

Question

I have a Delphi project called VR that produces an executable named VR.exe. To my dismay I discovered Windows (I am running Window 7 64 bit Ultimate) has added links to the start menu and under games: Search & Rescue: Vietnam MED+EVAC. The icons for the links are the default delphi app icon.

Did a bit of research and I found this post:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/a5919fc1-db3d-4f13-b241-d059df2bf11f/renaming-a-file-into-vrexe

How can I prevent windows from doing this?

Update: I have another project MM, which produces mm.exe. This one created a link to the Steam Dark Messiah Might and Magic Single Player.

Another update: We submitted a support request to Microsoft. They acknowledged it is a bug, however, they failed to provide a timeline for a fix.

Update: This is the answer from Microsoft:

I am writing to inform you that this issue is reproducible at our end and we have been reported regarding this in past as well. Since this is already identified as “By design” with our code and to this point we do not have a resolution on this, there’s not much I would be able to help with. However, if you have any points that you would like to bring to our knowledge like how it is impacting business or any other concerns , do let me know.

I accepted Remy's answer.

Answer 1

According to MSDN, game apps are supposed to integrate themselves into Game Explorer, Windows should not be integrating anything automatically. But I can confirm on a Win7 Home system that renaming any app to vr.exe and then running it causes Search & Rescue: Vietnam MED+EVAC to appear in Games Explorer (there was also a very noticeable delay when the app is run for the first time, which I imagine is due to the recognition/integraton taking place).

After running the app, I found the following Registry key associated with that game:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameUX\S-1-5-21-991038988-4040401710-2535580036-1000\{2A051900-E642-4D69-8D4E-1B3A2FD42CCF}

It contains a reference to this file

C:\Windows\system32\GameUXLegacyGDFs.dll

I looked at the file contents with a resource viewer, and see it is full of RC_DATA resources containing GDF game definitions.

I deleted the Registry key, and now the game no longer appears in Games Explorer, no matter how many times I run the renamed vr.exe file.