Windows Explorer New Menu

[Gliddador]

In an application I wrote formerly, a very small application, there was code for modifying the Windows Registry, so that the Explorer's New Menu might also be modified. This code worked well on Windows 10, but now, on Windows 11, the changes in the new menu are only seen after logging back into Windows. I did change the code a little, but it remains so sufficiently unmodified that it should still do the same thing.

I know I didn't share my code yet, but by reading this post can you see any problem, so that I must add code to notify the shell? Also, how would I do that?

Thank you.

 

[Gliddador]

Sorry for posting so many replies. That Stackoverflow answer did not give me the information required for getting the name of a file type from its extension.

Thanks for trying to help but I need more thorough documentation. I will try to find it in MSDN. I have not explored the registry for the answer. I prefer to depend on documentation.

 

[Skydiver]

Just going off of memory from Craig Brockschmidt's "Inside OLE" book which covered registering OLE objects specifically, but also dealt a little bit about file extension mappings. Forgive any possible inaccuracies. I last read that book back in the mid 90's. In general, every file extension will map to a ProgID. Every ProgID will have as its default value the friendly display name of that type.

 

[Gliddador]

Thank you for your answer, Skydiver, but when I look at the registry, I see that many ProgIDs, which I assume are the keys pointed to by the default values of file extension keys, have no friendly display name.

 

[Skydiver]

Traditionally, it would look something like this:

.docxml's default value is the ProgID wordxmlfile. Looking at the ProgID wordxmlfile, we find that it's display name is "Microsoft Word XML Document".

With the Win10 style entries we see something like this:

Nothing set for the default value, so let's look at the "OpenWithProgids":

And follow that trail:

 

[Gliddador]

Thank you for your answer; I find it a help to me.

 

[Gliddador]

Skydiver, in what order should I check these modes of displaying the file type name?

 

[Skydiver]

I don't understand the question. It seems to me that the search order will kind be obvious. Try drawing the flowchart on a piece of paper or a whiteboard.

Or are you trying to ask me what does the File Explorer do so that you can emulate what it does?

 

[DouglasMack]

In an application I wrote formerly, a very small application, there was code for modifying the Windows Registry, so that the Explorer's New Menu might also be modified. This code worked well on Windows 10, but now, on Windows 11, the changes in the new menu are only seen after logging back into Windows. I did change the code a little, but it remains so sufficiently unmodified that it should still do the same thing.

I know I didn't share my code yet, but by reading this post can you see any problem, so that I must add code to notify the shell? Also, how would I do that?

Thank you.

Based on the information you provided, it seems that the changes you are making to the Windows Registry are not being immediately reflected in the Explorer's New Menu on Windows 11. This could be due to a change in the way Windows 11 handles registry modifications, or it could be related to the specific changes you are making.

Without seeing your code, it's difficult to determine what might be causing the issue. However, one possibility is that you need to notify the shell of the changes you've made to the registry. This can be done using the SHChangeNotify function, which is part of the Windows Shell API.