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What Is A Windows Shell Extension

What is a Windows Shell Extension

A Windows shell extension is an in-process COM object which acts to deepen or extend the functionality of the Windows system shell (that is, the user interface which is based upon Internet Explorer).

"Shell items" are things like printers, folders, drivers, DVD players, WinZip, and so on.What is a Windows Shell Extension

Windows Shell extensions are usually automatically installed by your computer's operating system, to provide more context-menu options or property pages for shell items.

These are the Windows shell extensions:

Command Box: For opening a DOS box, or command prompt, on the presently selected directory

Run Program: This extension runs the presently selected program (.exe/.bat/.cmd) with parameters, subroutines, or functions prompted from the user

Date Renamer: For renaming a file or files with the current time and date

Empty Directory Remover: For discarding all empty sub-directories stemming from a particular directory

File Case: This one changes the case of the presently selected file or files

File Touch: This one changes the time and date qualities of the selected file(s)

Remote Reboot: For Restarting another computer residing in your domain

Read Only: For changing the read-only status of the presently selected file

Grab Path: For copying the pathway(s) of the presently selected file(s) to your clipboard

Shell Versions and Which Version You Have

If you need to determine a Windows shell version number, and you've installed either Instant Thumbview or Context ThumbView, you can find the information that you need in the programs' Configuration Managers.What is a Windows Shell Extension

These are the steps:

1) Click the Configuration Manager desktop icon so that it launches.

2)Go into the "About" tab that you'll see. Here, you will find the precise and complete shell version number underneath the name of the program.

There is also software that you can get and install for checking your shell extensions called the ShellExView utility, and this utility permits you to easily disable or enable each and every shell extension on your computer, too.

Shell Extension Problems

If shell extensions become corrupted, they can interfere with your computer's registry--its configured database (in all 32-bit versions of Windows) which contains all of the settings for the hardware and software being used by the computer in which the registry is installed.

Shell extensions can also open up temporary file folders which then just sit around on your computer and, when they start to pile up a lot, take up its memory and slow down its functionality.

This is why you should regularly use the Disk Cleanup system tool and, once in a while, the Defragmentation system tool.

Having a keen registry repair tool is very highly recommended by serious Windows environment computer users including software developers.

This software can help you fix all of the most common shell extension errors and will check for invalid shell extension paths.

If you don't have one already, feel free to check out the ones we recommend here at our site to ensure your computer is secure and safe.




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