gs said:
and do the values in reg_sz in there mean?
I should have mentioned the registry full key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs
What does XP do with them?
Let's say I write a program that uses MFC. The MFC libraries are
contained in mfc71.dll. As I don't know if the target workstation will
have that dll, I include mfc71.dll in my program's installation package,
marking it as a shared dll.
When my application gets installed on a Windows workstation, since I
have marked the mfc71.dll file as shared, the fact that it has been
installed gets recorded to the SharedDLLs registry key. This allows
Windows to keep track of how many times that dll has been installed.
You'll notice the Data for each one of the entries is a number. This
represents the number of times a setup package has installed that dll.
If some other app has also installed mfc71.dll and you then decide to
uninstall my application, the information is now recorded that I am not
the only application on the machine using that shared dll, and so my
uninstall should not remove the file. If my uninstall did remove the
file, then the other application(s) that had also needed the file would
stop functioning properly.
Granted that for this to work correctly requires some participation on
the part of application install package developers, and it isn't
completely full-proof.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows
http://support.telop.org
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