Autoruns: Two issues with HKCU/HKLM dual CLSID shellex registration

Olivier Marcoux 1 Reputation point
2021-03-03T15:10:01.667+00:00

I've observed two issues with Explorer context menus when migrating from Beyond Compare 3 (registered to HKLM) to Beyond Compare 4 (registered to HKCU).

  1. HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\CirrusShellEx doesn't seem to be displayed by Autoruns.

In fact, all the HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes... locations appears empty in Autoruns when they are not empty in Regedit ! (I didn't use any 'Hide' option in the menus)
2. CLSID {57FA2D12-D22D-490A-805A-5CB48E84F12A} was associated with Beyond Compare 3 path in HKLM, and Beyond Compare 4 path in HKCU

HKCU takes precedence : Windows Explorer showed Beyond Compare 4 context menus, even after I uninstalled Beyond Compare 3

Yet Autoruns identified various (HKLM?) shellex locations registered with the above CLSID, and incorrectly showed Beyond Compare 3 path under the column "Image Path" (as missing, in yellow, as I uninstalled BC3)

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