November 2nd, 2015

How can I make my custom namespace extension get categorized correctly in My Computer?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A customer was developing a custom namespace extension and they found that when displayed in My Computer, it showed up in the Other category.

Name Type
◢ Hard Disk Drives (3)
⏍ OS (C:) Local Disk
⏍ DISK_1 (E:) Local Disk
⏍ DISK_2 (F:) Local Disk
◢ Devices with Removable Storage (1)
☉ DVD RW Drive (D:) CD Drive
◢ Network Locations (1)
⏛ share (\\server) (Z:) Network Drive
◢ Other (1)
→ ⏚ NAS Device System Folder

They wanted it to appear in the Network Locations category because it represented a network device.

Explorer categorizes the items based on the SH­DESCRIPTION­ID.dwDescription­Id. We saw this structure some time ago when we tried to detect the Recycle Bin. By default shell namespace extensions are given SHDID_COMPUTER_OTHER as their description ID and the clsid is the class ID of the shell extension itself.

To customize the description ID, go to the shell namespace registration and add the following: 

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\
    CLSID\
        {clsid}\
            DescriptionID=REG_DWORD:9

The magic number 9 is SHDID_COMPUTER_NET­DRIVE. You can use any of the values supported by the SH­DESCRIPTION­ID structure. For example, if your shell extension wraps a file system directory, you may want to use SHDID_FS_DIRECTORY so that it gets categorized under Folders.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Code

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

0 comments

Discussion are closed.