question about shell integration with x64 version of XP

[troydtx]

hello,

First I want to say thank you for EDP! - I consider it an essential tool, and have been a happy customer for several years

My company is about roll out new machines to my department, which will have XP Pro x64 sp2 installed as the OS. I am one of the lucky pilot users of the new machines... (I think they have agreed to purchase ExamDiff Pro for all the developers, which is awesome, although I'll still maintain my licenses to use on my other PC's).


My question is in regard to the Windows Explorer integration.

The good news is, this seems to work perfectly in ExamDiff Pro! The context menus in Explorer seem to work exactly as they do in 32 bit XP.

Unfortunately most of the other tools I use daily (Directory Opus (DO), VS.NET 2005, various editors and other miscellaneous stuff) are not quite there yet.

It seems that you guys have created a *real* 64 bit shell extension that actually works in Explorer. All the other shell extentions I use work fine in Directory Opus (still 32 bit) and in the 32 bit version of Explorer, but will not show up in the regular 64 bit version of Explorer. However, the EDP shell integration does not seem to work in any 32 bit applications (including plain old Explorer).

I think the DO guys are working on 64 bit support, but in general it seems like it's going to be a long, long time (if ever) before shell extentions (in general) will work well in 64-bit land.

Sorry for all the rambling, but FINALLY here's my question:

Is there a way (on XP Pro x64 edition) to enable the 32-bit EDP shell integration (either in addition to or instead of the 64-bit integration)?

I would be more than happy to test out any ideas you may have, and provide any other configuration info you might want (and edit 42 registry keys, reboot the PC 20 times, stand on my head, and anything else that might help

Thanks very much for reading all this, and any help would be very very much appreciated!

Thanks!
Troy

[psguru]

I think the easiest way is to install version 3.4 with the Shell Extension option enabled, then install 3.5 without. The 3.5 installer is "smart" to figure out that it's running in a 64-bit OS, and it will install the appropriate Shell extension. 3.4 is not.

Now, this will give you the older version of the Shell extension, which is all right, I think. If you want to use the newer version (shipped with 3.5), you need to first install EDPro on a 32-bit OS, then copy the Shell extension DLL (EDPShell.dll) to the 64-bit machine. You may need to kill your 32-bit Explorer process running on the 64-bit machine.

BTW, you can run the 32-bit Explorer on a 64-bit Windows by using the following command:

%windir%\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate

Hope this helps.

[troydtx]

excellent, I will this process as soon as I can (which given the way Monday's usually go will probably be sometime this evening) and report back with the results.

Thanks!
Troy

[troydtx]

I hate it when Mondays last for two days...

I did get this working, but with some side effects. Here's what happened:

1. uninstalled ED 3.5.1.5, and rebooted PC.

2. installed version 3.4.2 (using default install location). NOTE: during install, opportunity to choose Windows Explorer Integration option was NOT presented. Could this be because even after the uninstall some registry entries remain?

3. version 3.4.2 installed without incident, and worked fine. shell integration with 32-bit Windows Explorer worked fine.

4. installed version 3.5.1.5 (using default install location). Again, during install, Windows Explorer Integration option was NOT presented.

5. version 3.5.1.5 installed without incident, and worked fine, however, shell integration with 32-bit Windows Explorer no longer working (context menu items not present). shell integration with 64-bit Windows Explorer also not working. Toggled that setting on and off several times, with no apparent effect.

6. installed version 3.4.2 again, this time changing install location to "ExamDiff 342" instead of "ExamDiff Pro". install completed without incident.

7. copied 32-bit 3.5.1.5 version of EDPShell.dll (size 134,624 bytes) from another PC (with 32-bit XP Pro SP2 and EDP 3.5.1.5 installed) into the 3.5.1.5 program folder (ExamDiff Pro) on the 64-bit PC.

8. edited windows registry (using regedit instead of regedt32 - not sure which you are 'supposed' to use on 64 bit machine).

9. searched registry, replaced all references to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\ExamDiff 342\EDPShell.dll with
C:\Program Files (x86)\ExamDiff Pro\EDPShell.dll

10. rebooted PC (just for luck)

RESULT: 32-bit shell ingegration works (and does appear to use the correct 3.5.1.5 version of EDP).

but now I have both versions installed on this machine.
and I might have changed one too many registry references from 'ExamDiff 342' to ExamDiff Pro', because under "Add or Remove Programs" in control panel, only one entry appears: "ExamDiff Pro 3.4.2".

Did I mess something up?

Is there an easier way to accomplished this?

Thanks!
Troy

[psguru]

Did I mess something up?

Probably not.

Is there an easier way to accomplished this?

Perhaps. I think the following steps will accomplish what you need:

1. Install 3.4.2
2. Install 3.5 into a different folder without the Shell integration (in 3.5 the option only appears if you are an admin)
3. Copy EDPShell.dll from the 3.4.2 folder to the 3.5 folder
4. Uninstall 3.4.2
5. Register EDPShell.dll by running

%windir%\SysWOW64\regsvr32 EDPShell.dll

Disclaimer: I haven't tried the steps myself

[troydtx]

I used a slight veriation to your last suggestion, and it worked!!

Here's what I did:
1. copy 32-bit version of 3.5 EDPShell.dll (from another PC) into the 3.5 folder, renaming it to EDPShell32.dll in the process (so as not to overwrite the 64-bit version).

2. Registrer EDPShell32.dll using
%windir%\SysWOW64\regsvr32 EDPShell32.dll

That's it! Now both the 64-bit and 32-bit shell extentions work!

Thanks for your assistance
Troy

[psguru]

Cool.