XP has more than 1 shell.dll file. I can't find any information as to what these do. Also I noticed that while most are called shell.dll the one in C: Windows/system is SHELL.DLL ( all caps ). What's the difference ?? Are they interchangable ??
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Hi dennisgk,
This file a Microsoft - System file. It should be there!!!!
You should have at least two of these files one in the system directory
and one either in the system32 directory or in the cachedll directory.
And no they are not interchangeble, they aren't even the same size.
But Why were you looking at them anyway?
Ref: http://support.microsoft.c
Shell.dll provides the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) drag and drop routines that Windows and other programs use.
dimeola,
A friend got a shell.dll error while rebooting. He replaced the one in C:windows\system (SHELL.DLL) with one (shell.dll) from www.dll-files.com. He couldn't find one on the Microsoft site. Anyway his desktop kinda fell apart. The shell.dll was an older version. I gave him a copy of the one (SHELL.DLL) in my C:windows\system. Everything appears OK now. SO, we were wondering what the files did. We're not sure it was the shell.dll file that caused the problem. He had a few others that is brother-in-law fixed for him later.
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by: ttterkPosted on 2004-06-28 at 01:49:17ID: 11413906
WinTasks DLL Library offers the following:
shell32 - shell32.dll - DLL Information
DLL File: shell32 or shell32.dll
DLL Name: Windows Shell Library
Description: File that contains the Windows Shell API functions used to open web pages and documents and to obtain information about file associations.
Part Of: Windows Shell
System DLL: Yes
Common Errors: File Not Found, Missing File, Exception Errors
Personally, I've got 5 (plus 5 backups of older and unmodified versions) and, while they're all different, they're not very different. I've even used the wrong one once in a while, with no problems at all. You'll find copies in c:\i386\, c:\windows\system32\, c:\windows\system32\dllcac
The working file is the one in c:\system32\ and the i386 and dllcache copies are backups windows uses to repair it when it senses a deviation from the original. You should be able to ignore case differences as long as the dates and sizes of the system32, dllcache and i386 versions are all the same.
One thing not mentioned by WinTasks is that this file also contains the common system icons, so it's the first to be hacked when you want to permanently change your recycle bin to something unique.