Category Archives: shell

Scott, Jerry, Thayn and I have whipped up a sample of indexing the registry, as well as a shell folder (namespace extension) for viewing it.  It’s great to be able to search the registry via the index and it’s great sample … Continue reading →

Well, I’ve put the WMI folder code up on codeplex.  Please remember that this code is very much pre-alpha.  I think that this will be a good way to share the code, allow others to contribute, etc.  If it works … Continue reading →

Not much to this – but I notice searches for this coming to my blog, so I might as well provide the answer.   Use SHGetPathFromIDList – as long as the pidl is part of the file system, this will … Continue reading →

So I have a bit of a beef with GetDisplayNameOf – I don’t like the flags.  I understand that when it was created, the flexibility of flags made a ton of sense.  It wasn’t well understood what potentially wildly different uses … Continue reading →

Things are slowing down on a few of my projects right now (this blog being one of them).  We’re getting ready to move into our house this weekend.  It’s funny, despite the huge amount of work that’s required it still … Continue reading →

I just needed to reset the icon cache (changed an icon in my shell folder) and found that I needed to do these steps: To purge your icon cache: ·         kill explorer ·         in a cmd window go to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local ·         attrib … Continue reading →

Well, I’ve got my PIDL structure (for now – really, I’ve got an awful PIDL that I’m in a hurry to change).  Basically the PIDL is the string representing the unique object.  For now I’m enumerating over a hard-coded query, … Continue reading →

One of the things you need to accomplish with PIDL is be able to get details about the object.  Although not necessarily, this usually means getting a reference to the original object again.   I’ve got enumeration of a single … Continue reading →

I’m switching from using the 2003 platform sdk to using the Vista platform SDK.  Partly, I’m doing this to get the strict pidl types that should help me avoid some bugs; partly, I’m doing this to get cool new APIs that … Continue reading →

Next I need to learn how to use WMI from c++, what the right security level is, and how to enumerate the toplevel classes.  One of the big challenges to WMI is that it’s going to be slow.  Everything.  Way … Continue reading →