[SOLVED] Context menu item not doing what it's supposed to. Application not found.

[Michael Jacky]

Hello, thanks for taking a look at my post
Hopefully you'll be able to help me with this!

So, I have this program on my computer called JDiskReport from JGoodies.
This is the program I usually use to ge ta sense of what is using up the space on my drives, and it gives me a good idea of what to move and what to leave.

Previously, rather than opening the program THEN choosing a directory to search, I've used the context menu item that automatically gets put in when you install the program. It when you right-click on a drive or folder you can choose the program in the menu and it'll automatically start scanning said drive/folder.
But, just out of the blue, the context menu item stopped working. No idea how or why.
I get an error message saying:

"F:\

Application not found"

F being the drive I right clicked and tried to scan.
The registry command looks like it's correctly structured:

"javaw.exe" -Xmx384m -jar -Dpath="<%1>" "C:\Program Files (x86)\JGoodies\JDiskReport 1.4.1\jdiskreport-1.4.1.jar"

But, honestly, I couldn't tell you what could potentially be wrong, so never mind what I think.
The command was only present under the 'Folder' part of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, I tried putting it under 'Drive' to see if that would fix it, but no luck.

Any ideas on why it's acting up? Did the author of the program mess up in some what?


Thanks in advance for any and all ideas!

 

[britechguy]

Unless you've already tried this, my typical advice when something like this occurs is to uninstall the third-party program, restart the system, and then reinstall it.

That generally resolves the issue and much more quickly than going down the rabbit hole of trying to determine what may have broken (often without success).

 

[Michael Jacky]

Unless you've already tried this, my typical advice when something like this occurs is to uninstall the third-party program, restart the system, and then reinstall it.

That generally resolves the issue and much more quickly than going down the rabbit hole of trying to determine what may have broken (often without success).

Excuse my lack of information, didn't really think about it when I asked the question.
I've already tried this, several times as well, including cleaning every mention of the program from the computer entirely (removing every file and mention in registry), to no avail.

But, do you think the command line is correctly written? Nothing obviously wrong with it?

 

[britechguy]

I could not possibly speak to the correctness of the syntax of a command line invocation for a program I know absolutely nothing about.

If an uninstall/reinstall didn't work, and the program has been known to work in the past "as is," then the next thing is:

Using SFC (System File Checker) and DISM (Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management) to Repair Windows 8 & 10

If that doesn't fix the issue, I would uninstall the program again, afterward, Doing a Windows 10 Repair Install or Feature Update Using the Windows 10 ISO file, then reinstall it after the repair install is complete.

If all of the above fails then I am completely out of options other than "the thermonuclear option" of doing a completely clean install of Windows 10 and configuring everything again from scratch.

 

[Michael Jacky]

I could not possibly speak to the correctness of the syntax of a command line invocation for a program I know absolutely nothing about.

If an uninstall/reinstall didn't work, and the program has been known to work in the past "as is," then the next thing is:

Using SFC (System File Checker) and DISM (Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management) to Repair Windows 8 & 10

If that doesn't fix the issue, I would uninstall the program again, afterward, Doing a Windows 10 Repair Install or Feature Update Using the Windows 10 ISO file, then reinstall it after the repair install is complete.

If all of the above fails then I am completely out of options other than "the thermonuclear option" of doing a completely clean install of Windows 10 and configuring everything again from scratch.

Yeah, I guess not.

I'll try the first two things. If they don't work, and if the only option is to reinstall windows, I'll just have to live with it being broken, cause a clean install of windows is not an option for me.

Thank you for your continued interest and support.

 

[britechguy]

Please do report back on how things work out (or don't - which I hope will not be the case).

 

[Tacyon]

This JDiskReports issue is actually due (or can be) to javaw.exe getting living the syswow64 path.

When you click on the icon to open JDiskReport, it may ask you if you want it to find javaw.exe and will then prepend the target statement with the syswow64 path.

"C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe" -Xmx384m -jar "C:\Program Files (x86)\JGoodies\JDiskReport 1.4.1\jdiskreport-1.4.1.jar"

However this will not resolve the right mouse click context option.
For that you have to make a registry edit.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\JDiskReport 1.4.1\command and modify the "javaw.exe" to be "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe"

The author of JDiskReport knows about this and if he ever gets around to a v1.5 he'll make the code change.