Deregistration

Usually a Shell Extension is deregistered with the Windows program regsvr32.exe. But this only applies to standard Shell Extension! To deregister a PlexData Shell Extension the Windows program rundll32.exe has to be used instead. This is because of the necessity to pass a parameter to the Shell Extension’s core binary file. See following example how to use rundll32.exe to remove the registration for a PlexData Shell Extension.

rundll32.exe pdcmse32.dll,UnregisterExtension pdcmse.config.xml

The example above assumes that rundll32.exe is called from within the folder were PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file is located. Another assumption is that the file pdcmse.config.xml (given as additional parameter) contains a valid Shell Extension configuration and is also available in that folder. Note that the surrounding process, were rundll32.exe is called from, must have administration privileges! Otherwise deregistration of the Shell Extension fails. On the other hand, if the optional argument has been left out, PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file will try to load its default configuration file pdcmse.removal.xml instead.

Along with deregistration it is possible to pass a GUID instead the name of a configuration file. In this case PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file will try to remove this single Shell Extension. See following example how to deregister a specific Shell Extension.

rundll32.exe pdcmse32.dll,UnregisterExtension fcf4085b-7d90-47c8-8447-604e441b8d7e

The example above assumes that rundll32.exe is called from within the folder were PlexData Shell Extension’s core binary file is located. Another assumption is that a Shell Extension with the GUID given as additional parameter is installed on the system. If this Shell Extension is not an installed PlexData Shell Extension the deregistration will fail.