Thinkpads Forum

7 Zip Usage Issue on T61

The Context Menus come up but they do not do anything and do not work.

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php? ... m_id=45797

http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4359151

Thinkvantage System Migration has been touted as the culprit. Is there any way to make this work without uninstalling SMA?

I woulnt using and older version of 7 Zip.

Note... this is for XP... I don't know about Vista. Since you don't mention either, I decided to post this anyways. Might be a good idea to update your signature.

Some applications need a little help to open files from context menus. Sometimes they won't open a file if the file happens to be in a folder within a folder, etc. I can't remember specific apps, but I've run into this before... not specifically on a T61 because I don't own one, nor with Thinkvantage System Migration since I never used it.

What you can try is setting a particular "switch" either in the Folder Options or the registry. I would try Folder Options first.

Open My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > File Types tab.

Scroll down the list to ZIP extension... select it, then click on Advanced. In the Actions window, click to highlight the open listing, then select Edit.

In the next window, look at the command used for... "Application used to perform action"

If the command looks like this example of Photoshop...
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Photoshop.exe"

Then change it to look like this...
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Photoshop.exe" "%1"

After you finish editing the line, click on Ok, (click on Ok as you close all the open windows you used for editing).

Note that the "%1" will tell the app to open any file with the zip extension no matter where it resides.

You shouldn't have to restart your computer for this command to take effect, so after editing, go ahead and test your context menu.

If this works for you, then go ahead and do the same for all the rest of the 7-zip context menu items, if needed. However, if it doesn't work, or the switch was already present, then I have no fresh ideas for you. All my apps only require the "%1" switch to open any of my files and I never had a problem using the switch.

The Registry... note that some context menus added for particular apps will have the application "greyed out" in Folder options. The only way to change them would be to edit the registry... which is not very difficult, but can be dangerous.

makai

Thanks Makai.

I instead tried the OLDER version / build that was described in the link. That works well for now. Hopefully its a bug they iron out later.

The issue is due to the fact that, when you right click an archive and choose 7-zip->something, explorer loads the 7-zip.dll from the Lenovo System Migration folder, instead of the 7-zip program folder.
Anyone has ideas why?

libit wrote:The issue is due to the fact that, when you right click an archive and choose 7-zip->something, explorer loads the 7-zip.dll from the Lenovo System Migration folder, instead of the 7-zip program folder.
Anyone has ideas why?

Probably because that's the DLL the was "registered" to Windows? You might be able to unregister the Lenovo version and register the proper version (regsvr32.exe).

Yes but I believed that "registering" a dll meant to create some keys in the registry and, searching through the registry, I find only 2 references to the 7-zip in sma:
one in hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\shareddlls
and the other in hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components
as for example:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\1B702F8E426562C499A7B6EBC52CD853]
"1E3E507F174AB624A9903724F94381EE"="C?\\Program Files\\ThinkVantage\\SMA\\7z\\Formats\\7z.dll"

All other registry entries that point to 7z.dll or 7-zip.dll correctly point to the ones in c:\programs files\7-zip

I'm not a registry expert but the 2 SMA entries seem relevant only for installation/uninstallation (in fact, even changing them to point to the 7-zip's 7-zip.dll doesn't solve).

I probably need to get more information on what 'registering a dll' exactly mean...

libit wrote:I probably need to get more information on what 'registering a dll' exactly mean...

Google yields some great results in your quest. One post I saw correctly pointed out that you might want to check your path variables to see if they are pointing to the "wrong" folder. If so, maybe inserting the correct folder in to the path prior to the "wrong" folder will help?

I don't mean to sound flippant (seriously) but this is why I don't use rescue and recovery, client security, system migration, and lately even access connections and power manager. Sadly it seems most of the recent versions of the Thinkvantage apps are getting worse and worse (i.e., more unreliable), at least in my experience.

I recently decided to uninstall access connections and power manager because since the last couple of updates they no longer work well for me and I had been using them without problems for many years. Perhaps the culprit is partly Vista x64, but I'm doing better without them, relying on 3rd party apps like, for example, Acronis True Image Home instead of Rescue and Recovery.

Well, after some investigation (in the 7-zip forum), I found what was causing the problem.
When you install 7-zip and the 7-zip dll gets registered (overwriting the SMA one), a registry key pointing to the SMA installation is not removed.

To get 7-zip working properly, you just need to delete the registry value "InprocServer32" under [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{23170F69-40C1-278A-1000-000100020000}\InprocServer32]
(Just remove the inprocserver32 REG_MULTI_SZ value under the inprocserver32 key, not the whole inprocserver32 key).

That key is a darwin descriptor pointing to the 7-zip dll distributed with SMA, which is obsolete. The problem is that when you register the new 7-zip.dll, that key doesn't get removed (even if you do it with regsvr32) so explorer keeps loading the old SMA dll instead of the newer one.

That said, I still haven't found a real use for SMA (uninstalling SMA would solve too).