Add to Shell Menu not working.

[Tris]

Hi,

THe "Add to Shell Menu" in pdf tools is not working for me. I have PDF Tools 10.5.2 installed as part of a PDF-XChange PRO installation.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled the programme and my XCShInfoSetup is as per the below.

image.png

image(1).png

image(2).png

OS is:

Edition Windows 11 Enterprise
Version 23H2
Installed on ‎10/‎02/‎2025
OS build 22631.4890
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22700.1067.0

Any help greatfully received.

Thanks

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hi,

Maybe this specific extension has been blocked by Windows, for one reason or another.

Please see the following Knowledge Base article and click "Registry Manipulation":
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgeba ... s-Explorer

Before deleting the mentioned registry key, you can do an export of it to be safe in case of you should still need it.

Kind regards and keep us posted.

Willy

[Tris]

Hi Willy,

Many thanks for your reply. Apologies, I forgot to add this detail to my original post; I've already been through KB395 (which is where I learnt about XCShInfoSetup.exe) and have checked the registery, no shell extentions are showing as blocked:

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I have also tried following the "Manually Register Dlls" section of the same article but although I can run command prompt as an Admin, which I can elevate with the local admin privliages I have, when I call regsvr32 from the command prompt it retuns the below error:

image(1).png

Which I think means the admin privlages are not being passed on from cmd.exe to regsvr32.exe, and is a problem I've tried to work around but to no avail. But I digress as this is not a pdf tools issue and is something I will take up with my IT department to see if they can permit me to do it, or do that bit for me, to see if this manual process fixes the issue.

However is it possible to do some other investigation to speculate as to whether this procedure - (and the effort it would involve!) - would actually fix the issue?

I have noticed the existence of the following files:

C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF Tools\PDFXToolsShellMenu.x64.dll
C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\Shell Extensions\XCShellMenu.x64.dll

The filenames elude to them being related (possibly critical) to the functionality in question, but I guess they possibly don't need registering themselves as they are just called by one of the other DLLs in C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\Shell Extensions which are registered by XCShInfoSetup.exe or the manual process (namely XCShInfo.x64.dll).

However using windows process explorer to try and "Find handle or DLL..." it returns no results for any of the following:

XCShInfo.x64.dll
PDFXToolsShellMenu.x64.dll
XCShellMenu.x64.dll

Which suggests they aren't registered\loaded\running and that maybe the manual registration process will fix it.
In the course of which I've talked myself round to it! I'll take it up with my IT department and see where that, and the manual process gets me!

Thanks again Willy
Tris

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Thanks for your reply Tris.

I hope that the people of your IT Department and/or PDF-XChange Support will be able to help you.

The error 0x80070005 seems indeed to be related to a lack of privileges. I suppose you sign in as Administrator (not as User) ?

Kind regards.

Willy

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello,

My first thought would be that the initial screenshot sent implies this is a managed location, where the files are uploaded/synced to another location/service. Sometimes those are known to interfere with the way windows handles file interactions, and as you see with the bundle of additions relating to managing access, and such, can result in some special actions being made available. The inverse can also happen however, with the file "not technically" being a PDF, but instead being a "shawdow copy" of a unique file type under the surface, windows may not load our shell items due to the definitions provided.

As such, before we rule that the "add to shell menu" item is entirely not working, I need to ask you if the option appears when you select and right click an a completely local file, which is not stored in a folder with any form of sync/sharing enabled.

If the option appears there, than there is something about the information in the synced folder leading to this, and we know where to investigate. If it also does not appear in a local folder, than we know there is an issue with our attempt to register through windows, and we know better where to investigate.

In the meantime, I have also passed this to the Dev team for review, but if you can get back to us with the results of this test before they do, I will be sure to add those details to their case.

Kind regards,

[Tris]

Hi Daniel and Willy,

Thanks for your replies. With regrads to Daniels suggestion to try a local file; I have done so, but I am still not seeing any pdf tools context menu(s).

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With regard to Willy's query about privileges (which I did chronologically before looking into Daniels suggestion above), I am logged in as a user but have now had my privileges sorted so that I have admin rights. I was then able to manulally register the DLL as per KB395 now getting:

image(1).png

instead of:

image(2).png

Futhermore I used process explorer to verify the x64 DLL is now loaded by explorer.exe and then did a reboot and checked it was loaded again just for good measure. As stated at the start of this reply - still no pdf tools context menus

image(3).png

I then had the idea to use a dependancy checker on XCShInfo.x64.dll to see if some critical dependancy is missing from my system. The results were far from clean but I'm well out of my depth at this point and not to sure what useful - if any - information it is giving me!!!

image(4).png

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hi,

It seems like a number of files for PDF-Tools (like rpcrt4.dll and ntdll.dll) are installed in Windows folders.

I assume you have installed PDF-Tools, with user-rights ?

If so, it would be good to try an un-install of PDF-Tools, restart of the computer, followed by a re-install, with admin-rights.

Does that help ?

Kind regards.

Willy

[Vladimir G - Tracker Dev]

Hi all,

It looks like you're heading in the wrong direction.

Tris was right—the PDFXToolsShellMenu.x64.dll is responsible for the PDF Tools shell extension.

Please try registering PDFXToolsShellMenu.x64.dll manually using regsvr.

One more question for Tris: Is it possible that you're running the 32-bit version of Explorer?

Best regards,

[Tris]

Hi Vladimir,

explorer.exe is reported as being for a 64 bit platform in the detailed process view of task manager. But this was not required in the end.
I registered PDFXToolsShellMenu.x64.dll as suggetsed and ta-da! :

image.png

The pdf tools context menu for both local and managed (e.g. OneDrive) pdf files is now working as required.

Many thanks for your help.
Tris

[Vladimir G - Tracker Dev]