There are several ways to install or uninstall the shell extension but all of them are based on the same idea. According to the ActiveX standards the shell extension library exports two installation-oriented methods: DllRegisterServer and DllUnregisterServer. Common registration procedures call these methods. As a result of this call shell extension library installs or uninstalls itself.

    The following utilities are able to register or unregister the shell extension library:

    regsvr32 - it is a native MS utility, you can find it in the System32 (System) directory. Run this utility without params to get the complete description of its command-line parameters. The most simple call looks like

regsvr32 MyLibrary.dll

The following command will uninstall the extension:

regsvr32 /u MyLibrary.dll

    tregsvr - it is a Borland's ActiveX installation utility. It uses almost the same command line parameters as regsvr32. Use

tregsvr MyLibrary.dll

to install the extension and

tregsvr /u MyLibrary.dll

to uninstall it.

Delphi IDE | Run | Register ActiveX Server and Delphi IDE | Run | Unregister ActiveX Server menu items allow you to install and uninstall the extension, but many Shell+ users were notified about weird shell extensions behaviour when they tried to register or unregister their shell extensions using these commands. We suggest to use regsvr32.exe utility to register your Shell extensions.

Deployment - if you deploy your shell extension then do not forget to check the intaller's option "Register ActiveX Dll". Different install makers have different names and descriptions for this option but most of them support this feature.

  Top