Where and how to obtain the registry values for context menu handlers?

I just added a registry key to have "copy to .." in my rightclick context menu. i used this howto:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/add-copy-to-move-to-to-the-windows-explorer-right-click-menu/

What is puzzeling me is where to get the information from that i have to enter this strange key value

{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Which seems to me is some sort of hexadecimale value enableing the rightclick explorer menu. But how exactly was this menu obtained in the first place? It just seems to me everybody or at least many people know about this hack but noone seems to know what this value stands for and where does it come from and how it was obtained. Is there a whitepaper from microsoft or something?

l1zard

Posted 2012-12-04T15:52:22.407

Reputation: 933

What version of windows exactly are we dealing with? As to how this version was determined, it likely came from trial and error, more information on the type of value would need to be known. – Ramhound – 2012-12-04T16:05:49.863

this hack seems to work with windows 7 and xp and i am not sure but i think it will work on vista too. – l1zard – 2012-12-04T16:07:54.197

Answers

The number is called a GUID (Globally unique identifier) and it is used a lot under the hood in Windows and many other IT systems.

This particular value is a constant for the "Microsoft CopyTo Service." At some point, Microsoft (and someone else) made this up and since then that string of characters is used to identify that particular feature of Windows.

There are many different types of objects in Windows that are identified with GUID. Normally, the user is shielded from seeing these, but when you edit the registry, you usually come across them.

This one may have been present since Windows 95.

Peter Hahndorf

Posted 2012-12-04T15:52:22.407

Reputation: 10 677

is there a way to gain this guids in windows or do you know the most common ones? – l1zard – 2012-12-04T18:01:43.053

1Open regedit.exe and navigate to 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID' right click on CLSID and select 'Export', save the file and then open it in Notepad. On my machine there are 9000+ GUIDs in there, enjoy. – Peter Hahndorf – 2012-12-04T18:32:54.193