Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedJ]

This is meant as a Fix Request, I just couldn't cram any extra text into the subject line:

Recently, the ability to launch PowerShell or the Command Prompt in administrator mode from the start menu has stopped working. After a lot of other dead-ends, I disabled individual shell extensions and isolated the cause to the Media Center x64 context menu extension.

In retrospect, for years I have experienced the symptoms described by others in this post https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,124036.msg858781.html#msg858781 (such as Win+X menu items not working) - and had no reason to suspect Media Center would be in any way involved. This seems to have been reported at least as far back as version MC 19 https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=84496.0
MC's shell extension is also implicated with breaking the power user menu functionality on the site of a tool that can be used to isolate problem extension https://shellfix.nirsoft.net/shell_problems_list.html

Since this and related issues have been reported by various users for a long time now and, due to its nature and difficulty in isolating, I suspect many others could have this problem and never have any thoughts to connect it to MC in order to report it, I would request JRiver devs look into the problem to see if the shell extension has any code that is not compliant with Windows' documented context menu proscribed methodology.

I also located a StackOverflow post with a possible cause/solution that might possibly serve as a starting point for investigation, although I have no way of knowing whether this is actually relevant to MC code.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/28386646

[David Sydney]

I don't think there are many that share your experience there. Certainly my set windows does not experience any of these problems. Time you wiped your computer and did a clean install?

[RedJ]

I don't think there are many that share your experience there. Certainly my set windows does not experience any of these problems. Time you wiped your computer and did a clean install?

I think I've provided enough links to other reports to establish my premise. Again, various symptoms of this problem have been reported by others and experienced by myself over many years (version 19 was released in 2013). This includes multiple PCs and Windows installs for myself alone. The severity of the problem coupled with the fairly technical diagnosis and it being reported over such a wide range of versions and setups is sufficient that I believe it warrants investigation. It might end up being an incredibly easy change to make to prevent a, probably uncommon, but very consequential and difficult to diagnose problem from occurring. It might be as simple as the MC installer unregistering and re-registering the extension every time MC updates as a bit of an insurance step.

In the meantime, here is a probable fix for those experiencing the problem:

• Open up Command Prompt as an Administrator
(you will need Administrator privileges for the second step so, if that's broken from the start menu or power user menu, the easiest way will be to launch directly from the Command Prompt executable. Click Win+R to bring up the Run dialog and type:

Code: [Select]

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe" and then CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

• Enter

Code: [Select]

regsvr32.exe /u "%ProgramFiles%\J River\Media Center 27\JRShellExt.dll" or replace %ProgramFiles% with the correct install path for Media Center.
You should get a dialog acknowledging successful unregistering of the shell extension. If not, something went wrong with path or permissions.

• Next, enter

Code: [Select]

regsvr32.exe "%ProgramFiles%\J River\Media Center 27\JRShellExt.dll"
You should again see a dialog pop up that confirms the shell extension is successfully registered.

To get Win+X Power User commands or the Admin Command Prompt/PowerShell functional again from the Start Menu, it may be necessary to restart Windows Explorer. This can be done right from the same open Command Prompt:

Code: [Select]

taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe & start explorer

This procedure worked for me and I have created a simple batch script to quickly and easily run fix this on other PCs that have this problem or in the future should it recur.

[Business]

This method solved a problem that had plagued me for a long time.
The administrator mode from the desktop and start menu is working fine.
Thank you.

[JimH]

RedJ,
Thanks for posting that, but all you're doing is unregistering and registering MC's dll, correct?

Code: [Select]

regsvr32.exe /u "%ProgramFiles%\J River\Media Center 27\JRShellExt.dll"
regsvr32.exe "%ProgramFiles%\J River\Media Center 27\JRShellExt.dll"


[Hendrik]

I made some changes to the extension that may help, however I had some issues to reproduce the problem in the first place, so its not 100%. Circle back to this once MC28 is available for testing.

[RedJ]

Thanks for posting that, but all you're doing is unregistering and registering MC's dll, correct?

Correct. Unregistering and re-registering the shell extension is all that seems required to fix the Windows functionality problems.

I made some changes to the extension that may help, however I had some issues to reproduce the problem in the first place, so its not 100%. Circle back to this once MC28 is available for testing.

Awesome. Thank you. Since I don't currently have a way to repro the problem, I'm not sure when the first opportunity to test your fix will be, but I appreciate you at least looking into it. I will check out a few other installs I may still have MC on and, if the problem exists on any of these, I'll leave it alone until MC28 builds are available to me.