Editing the windows context menu

Are you just talking about in Windows itself, or other applications?

Basically its in the registry

google it - first thing I found with the following key words "windows context menu editing"

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-026

What are you trying to achieve

I think that this is what you may be looking for:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

yoo can enable/disable items from the context menu

@Hack78,

I am referring to Windows itself.

If I right-click on a specific file, I get a menu with a list of options. What I would like to know is how to remove certain options, add my own, and re-order the menu (or add separators) for specific file types.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again.

The 2 things I use to customize context menus are Tune Up Utilities 2008 and Glary Utilities.  Both go well together, because they can change different things.  Glary is free, has 1 click maintenance with Registry Cleaner, Shortcuts Fixer, Start-up Manager, Temp Files Cleaner, Tracks Eraser, and Spyware Remover.  The context menu manager allows you to change menus associated with desktop, all files, directories, drives, folders, certain file types, recycle bin, etc.  Also has a lot more utilities for optimization and system tools.  Tune Up is $50, but has a lot of cool features also like custom boot screen, (Which works for Vista) Visual Styles, Log On Screen, you can change a lot of icons like Iconpackager does, 1 Click maintenance, Optimization, and even things like changing the width of your task bar buttons, which I use to conserve space.  Hope this helps out.

In XP, just go into "Folder Options" (Under the Control Panel, or the Tools Menu in any folder), and File Types.

From there you can add / cull various filetypes and extensions. You can goof yourself up fairly easily, but it's not terribly complex - It's one of the first places I go to pee in the corner and clear out cruft in favor of stuff *I* want to use on a new system.

Example:Set MPlayer to play .flv files downloaded from youtube.

Tap (New) set extension as FLV, select (Advance), and select new Filetype from the dropdown list. (OK)

Now select your newly created FLV listing in Folder Options/Filetypes; click (advanced);

Type Play in the 'Action' field (Descriptive only - Open, load, or Pron would work just as well)

Browse to Mplayer (Ex: "C:\Documents and Settings\jwest\My Applications\MPlayer-1.0rc2\mplayer.exe") and append (space) "%L" (Quotes typically required for both path and switches) at the end. %L this is a variable for windows to pass along the file path - if you still have something only 8.3 aware, use "%1". forces windows to pass along the file path to your application. DDE I don't really know that much about except it's part of the Windows internal messaging system, and nothing I used has ever cared. You can also add any other switches for your program as further quotes - i.e. to run in fullscreen in mplayer; append "%L" "-fs" (OK)

If you've added more than one option, set one as your default (Double click) option, (Ok), (OK) again to exit Folder Options, and if I haven't skipped something stupid, you should be able to doubleclick a .flv file and have mplayer play it.

If you're adding a filetype to a previously existing association, just select that from the drop down list originally - i.e., you hate Quicktime and want Mplayer to play .mov files, instead of selecting <new>, select the file type you just set up and the .mov files will inherit the same options (IIRC).

Jonnan

Another good tool is Mmm Free or Mmm+ from:

http://hace-software.com/programs.shtml

It doesn't have the ability to add items, but it is very good for organizing, hiding, creating sub-menus.. of items in context menus. very cool.