ShellTools disappear from context menu

[Anonymous]

We have installed PDF ShellTools on our new Windows 2003 terminal servers. On two of the servers, the context menu entry for PDF ShellTools disappears randomly. The application is installed, the license key is in place, and when I reinstall the application the context menu is available again. No other terminal server seems to have this issue. How can I prevent the context menu from disappearing?

Thanks

[RTT]

Some questions:

- Are only the context menu tools that disappear? The InfoTip and InfoEdit continue active?

- After disappear they randomly appear again or you always need to reinstall?

- When this happen what is show in the PDF-ShellTools preferences editor, the context menu tools are checked or unchecked?

If unchecked almost sure something is changing the registry keys, Windows itself or another application you have installed on these computers.
The keys involved, you can check them using the Windows registry key editor, are:

In the next key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf
check the default value, if Acrobat V7 installed you have "AcroExch.Document "

If this is the case check if this key exist

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers\{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

If yes check also if the control is registered:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

Check also if the shell extension is approved. In this key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved

we need to have there the ShellTools context menu extension CLSID

{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

Something is different on these two computers, and from here is not very easy to debug the problem. If you have not understood something or if this is too complicated let me know and we can thing in another approach

You can use this tools to monitorize these keys
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/regmon.mspx
or
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx

[Anonymous]

- Are only the context menu tools that disappear? The InfoTip and InfoEdit continue active?

InfoTip and InfoEdit have never been available on the context menu
 on any of our servers

- After disappear they randomly appear again or you always need to reinstall?

always reinstall

- When this happen what is show in the PDF-ShellTools preferences editor, the context menu tools are checked or unchecked?

the PDFShellTools menu item wasn't installed. It is now, and when they next disappear I will note this


If unchecked almost sure something is changing the registry keys, Windows itself or another application you have installed on these computers.
The keys involved, you can check them using the Windows registry key editor, are:

In the next key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf
check the default value, if Acrobat V7 installed you have "AcroExch.Document "

If this is the case check if this key exist

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7\ShellEx\ContextMenuHandlers\{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

If yes check also if the control is registered:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

Check also if the shell extension is approved. In this key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved

we need to have there the ShellTools context menu extension CLSID

{E3FD95C1-D5B1-4929-B0EC-C156318EDD8F}

all keys are currently correct, I will check them again when the context menu disappears

[RTT]

- Are only the context menu tools that disappear? The InfoTip and InfoEdit continue active?

InfoTip and InfoEdit have never been available on the context menu on any of our servers

These tools are not context menu accessible!! The InfoTip is fired by mouse over events, and show metadata in InfoTip balloons (the yellow balloons that pop up over a file). The InfoEdit is a property sheet tool (fired when file properties is invoked in the shell) and is used to edit the pdfs metadata fields. Check program homepage for more information.

all keys are currently correct, I will check them again when the context menu disappears

Ok, let me know what you discover when the problem happen again