Shell Extensions of VirtualCloneDrive and Feature Request

[SteveG123]

Hello,

does anybody know how I can add a shell extension
to a specific drive? If I open an iso image it is mounted
in the first virtual CDRom ( eg: X: ) and if i try to open
the next iso, the first iso will be replaced :-(

It would be good if the shell extensions are integrated with
a specific mountpoint something like this:

-----
Mount to Drive W:
Mount to Drive X:
Mount to Drive Y:
-----

in a popup menu, if an iso/img/nrg, etc is clicked.
Depending how many virtual drives are exists.

Or does anybody know a third party shell extension?

 

[keyosuke]

Tray tool for mounting and unmounting discs.

I found Virtual CloneDrive promising but unusable without some fast gui (like the context menu this guy was asking for on here) so then I thought back to Daemon Tools and the other programs like it and decided to make a simple, fast tray icon that can be clicked to allow mounting and unmounting of images. I've attached it to this post for free use by anyone. No warrantees if it will work for anyone else since I haven't bothered to test it on anyone elses PC. It has a lot of rough edges, but feel free to use it if it helps you. If you want it to start with windows to give you a "daemontools" type feel with Virtual CloneDrive, add a shortcut to your startup folder. If it fails and I have time I'll fix it.

 

[damnskippy]

Thanks for submitting the utility keyosuke. Always good to see people contributing things like this.

 

[keyosuke]

Today I tried Virtual Clonedrive on an XP based PC for the first time and I had context menus and that sheep addon thing all working. If I had that yesterday on WIndows 2008 (same as Vista compatibility wise) wouldn't have thrown that menu together. Well, since there doesn't seem to be a tray icon type thing for this tool, I think I'll develope it further. It needs to support up to 15 drives and show only enabled drives. It would also be nice if it managed the context menus, so people on windows 2008+ who don't see them for whatever reason can just add them with this app I made. Any other suggestions would be nice.

 

[Turkleton]

Actually, I have one here and it looks a bit more advanced than your one currently is.

I've been using it for a while now since switching over from DT to VCD.

 

[keyosuke]

That's awesome... I feel glad that I posted mine if it stirred the pot and nicer ones came floating up. Mine took 2 hours and was pasted together from codesnippets in the internet in a rush, so I was going to make it better but I'll try this one when I get home and if it meets my needs I"ll stop developing mine. I wonder if anyone else has addons like this they can post. The more of htis stuff shows up the greater VCD is to use. It's all about the community.

 

[SteveG123]

Actually, I have one here and it looks a bit more advanced than your one currently is.

I've been using it for a while now since switching over from DT to VCD.

That is nearly that what I searched for.
Thank you for that and thank you keystoke.

Now it would be good if exatcly this menu would come up
if I do a rightclick on an iso/img/nrg/etc. file

Where do you get the tool and ist the source available?

I plan to switch from DT to VCD too, because it seems the
that the awxDTools are no longer working with new DT versions
and there are no new awxDTools developments and the DT doesn't
work with Windows 7 (RC) yet.

The awxDTools Style is that what I would like to have

 

[keyosuke]

Such context menus can be edited by goofing with the registry. For me, rightclicking the drive gets me such a context menu when I'm on XP, but on Windows 2008 and Windows 7 I don't recall a context menu for the virtual drives in My Computer. I"ll check it again later when I'm near windows 2008. I think if one of us has the time we should edit our tray app to see how many virtual drives are installed and set up context menus based on the number of drives. Like Rightclick > Open, Explore, Search .... | Virtual CloneDrive> Drive A> Mount , Unmount, Drive B> Mount, Unmount, etc
If you have source to that app maybe toss this in Turkleton? I'll share my source if anyone wants to tinker with vb.net

 

[Webslinger]

Again, anyone downloading attachments and running them are advised to click http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=864 first. I'm not saying
anyone has posted something malicious, but I and Slysoft accept no responsibility
regardless.

 

[Turkleton]

It's not open source I'm afraid.

 

[keyosuke]

Perhaps you know the author and would make the suggestion to him? If not, maybe I"ll make my crappy one "better" later. The tricky thing with the context menu stuff is to avoid stepping on the context menus that the sheep addon already provide on XP and down.

 

[Turkleton]

Sorry, I don't really follow your suggestion.

You want open/explore/search options for each of the drives accessible in the tray icon?

Surely it's just as easy to open up explorer directly rather than waiting for context menus (and their sub-menus) to 'roll' out?

The tray icon is simply a tray icon, I don't think any shell extension stuff really belongs in there... besides, Elaborate Bytes have already implemented a shell extension (and normal file association stuff) - even if it doesn't do everything you need it to.

 

[keyosuke]

No, the Open, Explore, Search are menu options found on all drives in all windows versions. I was listing the existing menu system so I could continue it with a further list of customized new context menu entries for each virtual cd-rom drive. To say it in simple english, I would like a tray utility that managed the context menu addons that the official sheep addon currently attempts to provide; which are: Mount, Unmount, clear history, purge history, recent ISOs .All of those four context menu entries are inside a higher encompassing entry called Virtual CloneDrive.

The reason I want this managed and controlled by a third party app and not the implementation Elaborate Bytes made that comes with Virtual CloneDrive is that Elaborate Bytes still doesn't make these menus on my OS. The other guy a few posts up seems to have wanted a menu added to all supported file extensions that shows a list of virtual drives and lets you mount to whichever is selected. A cascading context menu like this would be a matter of checking how many drives are virtualized and then setting some registry keys. This needs to be done by an app or some type, be it scripted or compiled, because the number of drives matters, and it has to make sure it's playing nice with Elaborate Bytes implementation. Elaborate Bytes' context menu is only installed when the tool installs so there's no reason it has to be interfered with if it indeed installed. On my Windows 2008 machine it didn't install and I'd like it. I think having these context menus is basically the same thing as having them coming off a tray utility, except that they aren't just in the tray. This isn't some wingnut crazy idea ... it's been done for Daemon Toolz as mentioned way at the top of this thread. Daemon Tools had an addon that did just this; though it came with a tray utility like the ones we've made. I feel having the tray utility is "going half way" toward what the original guy and I wanted, but it might be good enough to settle for. I didn't go very far with my app because it was "good enough" for me and me alone. I'm making the suggestion because this is my understanding of what SteveG123 was looking for. My tray tool had a blank options dialogue I was going to use to allow the user to check a box for if they wanted the cascading menus... or check a box of they want sheep head icons all over their drives (not a favorite thing of mine). Other thing I would have had on my context menu is an item that launches Elaborate Bytes Virtual CloneDrive's own configuration utility (making the tray more tightly integrated with CloneDrive)

 

[James]

The reason I want this managed and controlled by a third party app and not the implementation Elaborate Bytes made that comes with Virtual CloneDrive is that Elaborate Bytes still doesn't make these menus on my OS.

Well, *this* is the major problem. VCD should have shell extensions on ALL OS versions. I tried Windows 7 RC (64bit) and it works well.

 

[Turkleton]

I guess it would be nice if the current file associations in the registry were moved into the shell extension and the 'Virtual CloneDrive' context menu entry (that's currently reserved for the virtual drives) started to show up for the 'associated' image files too.

Of course it would then need to be expanded to list all the available drives and add the mount / unmount options you mentioned.

I guess that's just not something the devs want to spend their time on - what with it being freeware and all that.

So if you fancy writing your own shell extension for that, be my guest!

It's not often that I find myself wanting to mount an image I have open (visible) in explorer so the shell extension / file association stuff gets little/no use by me. I just go straight for the tray icon, pick my drive and navigate away in the dialog box

I guess it just depends on what you've grown up using... and for me it was always the DT tray icon.

 

[keyosuke]

Well, I guess I'm the same where the tray tool is concerned. I almost never used any other way to set my image of choice.

I think the freeware nature of VCD is why either of us wrote any code to augment it. Opensource software gets the advantage of people chipping in but this is one case where we get to see people trying to make a closed source app nicer. Now that I take a closer look, I think Windows 2008 is my only OS where I don't get that context menu to mount things. Imagine my shock when I installed VCD and wanted no file associations, but then couldn't mount anything. The documentation was pretty lacking as far as how to mount with commandline ... or maybe I just didn't look hard enough. I ended up trying things out in command prompt with /? and eventually made the tray icon. I think I may no work on it much more due to laziness and lack of need, but I'll make a series of reg files for whoever wants that context menu for file extensions.

Update: Seems I was wrong about the cascading context menu being a simple registry edit... it is actually a matter of writing a shell plugin if I want it to be a cascading context menu. If I want it to just list the first couple of drives and let you mount to one of them, that's possible but to list 15 drives in a file type context menu is insane to me. I guess that puts an end to this idea unless I get bored enough to waste a lot of time.

 

[James]

Now that I take a closer look, I think Windows 2008 is my only OS where I don't get that context menu to mount things.

What driver letters are assigned to VCD?
It probably won't work with letters A, B or C.

 

[James]

Hello,

does anybody know how I can add a shell extension
to a specific drive? If I open an iso image it is mounted
in the first virtual CDRom ( eg: X: ) and if i try to open
the next iso, the first iso will be replaced :-(

It would be good if the shell extensions are integrated with
a specific mountpoint something like this:

-----
Mount to Drive W:
Mount to Drive X:
Mount to Drive Y:
-----

in a popup menu, if an iso/img/nrg, etc is clicked.
Depending how many virtual drives are exists.

Or does anybody know a third party shell extension?

VCD ships with a very nice shell extension. Just right click the drive.
Or are you talking about a tray icon?
This will be added in the next beta.

 

[keyosuke]

It does ship with a very nice shell extension that doesn't appear on my home installation of windows 2008. Windows 2008 is the server version of Windows Vista. Perhaps it's a freak anomaly that I do not get a context menu. Would you like a screen shot of my windows build and lack of context menu? Most companies don't bother supporting server OSes, so I would understand taking that route.

Actually, the shell extension the original poster was discussing was assigned to the file types supported by VCD, and not just the drive icons themselves (I believe that's what he meant). He mentions another software which was an extension of Daemon Tools and added explorer plugin context menu handlers to file types associated to Daemon Tools.

The tray icon related discussion was a branch off of his topic for the sake of solving his problem by another means than the one he was looking for.

My complements on VCD by the way.

 

[SteveG123]

VCD ships with a very nice shell extension. Just right click the drive.
Or are you talking about a tray icon?
This will be added in the next beta.

I think there are some missunderstandings.
First have a look at the first screenshot at:

http://www.failure.bravehost.com/virtual/drive/extension/

This screenshot shows what I mean with a useful shellextension
It is the awxDTools extension used with DaemonTools.

The extension determines the number of drives and the letters
which belongs to that drives and then shows as cascaded context
menu where I can choose to which drive the image will be mounted.
The shell extension should determine all type of files which will work.

In this example not to first empty one, but to drive T:
See screenshot #2

The second screenshot shows a menu which is already implemented
in VCDs Shell Extension. I know that and I thing you mean that.
The awxDTools has an additional menuitem to unmount _all_ drives.
This is not a very important feature, but perhaps an idea to extend
the existing shell extension of VCD by this menuitem.

btw:
Sorry for my last response, but first didn't see the second page
of this thread ;-)