Context menu icons

Hi all - this one is not too difficult I think - just want to confirm I am on the right track ...
- right click on any file or folder in Windows Explorerer
You get some menu choices ..
Some of them have/may have icons to the left of the menu text

Question is : How do you associate icons of your choice
to these menu items ?

best regards

 

“- this one is not too difficult I think -â€

What track are you on?

I looked at this a while back but put on the back burner when I couldn't find the texts which do have icons.

 

merlin--Not totally sure I understand your question. When I right click on a file in Windows Explorer, the only command option that has an icon is WinZip. The others, Open, Cut, Copy, Rename, etc. do not. Now if the context menu has the Send To option, then placing the cursor on Send To drops down a list of all the shortcuts in my Send To folder, and all of them have the icons Windows gave the programs. And for many of these, I can change the icon by right clicking on the shortcut|Proerties|Shortcut tab and clicking Change Icon.
And going back to the original right click context window, I suppose if I added more programs to it (in addition to WinZip), I would get their icons attached. And to change them, I expect I would have to go to the shortcut to the program's .exe file and do a Change Icon on it. Never tried it.

 

It's not that simple Jim. The Send To is a different animal to the other entries. The app AttribTree I wrote a few weeks back appears in the context menu on right clicking folders and I wanted to include an icon for that but couldn't figure how to do it.

I have a few entries with icons, including WinZip, and most of them are actions along the lines of command lines with switches; like the WinZip entries.

AttribTree was got into the context menu via:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
and I tried sneaking a DefaultIcon into the structure but it was ignored.

 

Thanks for the replies !

I am no Windows programmer, and as ge says it's very complex.
I installed a little app called IconViewPro. This app shows up on
the context menu of every type of file and all folders.
If I right click a file or folder and click IconViewPro, it shows me the icons present in the file or folder.
On the Windows Explorer Context Menu it has an Icon next to the text like some other choices (Winzip, Winrar etc) - and that's what started me looking into the question of how to add Icons to Context Menu. Nearly lost my beans on this one ... I do not understand (heard that one before ?) why MS made this so complicated with their "customize it" blah blah.
So I did this :
- save current registry
- dumped the current registry to a .reg file (only 10 giga !)
- restored a registry from before I installed IconViewPro
- dumped this one with different name
- restored current registry
- compared the old / new dumps with a good app I have installed
called Beyond Compare.
- here is an extract from a report it can produce

L194036 "Implementing "=hex:1c,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,d3,07,0c,00,04,00,12,00,0d,00,03,00,\
26,00,46,00,06,00,00,00,64,4e,a2,ef,78,b0,d0,11,89,e4,00,c0,4f,c9,e2,6e,01,\

R194028 "Implementing "=hex:1c,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,d3,07,0c,00,04,00,12,00,0c,00,0e,00,\
06,00,58,02,06,00,00,00,64,4e,a2,ef,78,b0,d0,11,89,e4,00,c0,4f,c9,e2,6e,01,\
-----------------------------------------------------
L194046 "Implementing "=hex:1c,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,d3,07,0c,00,04,00,12,00,0d,00,03,00,\
26,00,22,01,03,00,00,00,25,8c,5c,4d,75,d0,d0,11,b4,16,00,c0,4f,b9,03,76,7f,\

R194038 "Implementing "=hex:1c,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,d3,07,0c,00,04,00,12,00,0c,00,0e,00,\
06,00,34,03,03,00,00,00,25,8c,5c,4d,75,d0,d0,11,b4,16,00,c0,4f,b9,03,76,7f,\
----------------------------------------

The keys Rxxxxx are the newer ones ie WITH IconViewPro and it's
icon.
So the new hex values point to context menu, .exe item and icon
for IconViewPro.
At this point I called it a day for now.
There is a $69 app called Context Menu Extension DLL to do all
the setups - but who needs / can afford that ?
Have a look at your "Implementing" keys and see if you can interpret them - maybe you have a buddy who is a Windows programmer ?
regards

PS On this board, do the animated .gif Smileys cause your cursor to flicker ?

 

merlin

You'll find a heap of info @
Creating Shell Extension Handlers

What I cannot figure out yet is whether to spend sometime in a darkened room before reading the above or after. I suspect that the former is expedient and the latter is mandatory.

Liked your 'before' and 'after' reg comparison technique - nice to see someone roll their sleeves up. I've been using RegShot for sometime now especially for tracking down changed valuenames after selecting an option in a dialog box. Its a breeze to use and I have the snapshots dumped to a Ram disk.

I'm surprised that only changes in "Implementing" were found. There should have been some additions to ContextMenuHandlers in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*.

 

Nice question, merlin!!
Now we all know how to do it.

 

Thanks for the help, links and suggestions - I have decided to
cut down on my PC time - maybe watch some TV or buy a
budgerigar instead.
regards