Adding a context menu item in Windows for a specific file extension
The general steps to achieve this are as follows:
- Fire up
regedit
- Identify the ProgID for your extension - go to
HKCR\.yourextension
and take note of the default value (in your case,dllfile
) - Navigate to
HKCU\Software\Classes
(for user) orHKLM\Software\Classes
(for all users) - Look for a matching key (in your case
dllfile
) - if it's not there, create it - Ensure it has a sub-key called
shell
- Add a sub-key to
shell
named as the command you want (refer to image below) - Add a sub-key to your new key called
command
- Modify the
(Default)
value to be the command you want to execute.%1
will give you the path of the file in context (remember to wrap it in"
due to potential white-space in the path)
You seem to have done all the above, so you may be doing something wrong, as this is my result after a quick sanity test:
So, here are a few things I can think of that would make it behave non-intuitively:
- You're adding this to
HKLM
rather thanHKCU
- due to how inheritance works, I do believe adding it toHKLM
would require a restart, or at best, a shell restart - You've added this to
HKCU
but your dll requires elevated permissions to access - You have some silly syntax error somewhere ;)
The sample command I used to test this was a good old boring "C:\Windows\notepad.exe" "%1"
This is based on andromeda947's answer here:
If you have admin rights you can use HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.yourextension
, which is simpler as it doesn't require an intermediate ProgID.
Option 1: edit the registry manually
- add a new key at
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.yourextension\shell\your menu entry text\command
creating any keys you need to in that path (if there's not one for.yourextension
add it; if there's not one forshell
add it; etc) - set the default value for
command
(the last key you created) toC:\path\to\yourapp.exe "%1"
Option 2: I made a tool to do this
you can download it here. This is an example of how to register notepad.exe as a context menu item for dll files.
regwincontext.exe dll "notepad it" C:\Windows\notepad.exe