Question

If I run

C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate,c:

the the 32 bit version of windows explorer comes up and I can use context menus.

If i go to C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64 and double click on explorer I do not get context menues.

Does anyone know how to get a short cut to

C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate,c:

I did put that command in a .cmd file and run from there but then I have cmd window up all the time.

Answer 1

The IBM technote swg21251833 does mention that the 64-bit Windows Explorer is not displaying ClearCase Context menus.

ClearCase is a 32-bit application, therefore, the ClearCase and Windows Explorer integration will only work in a 32-bit Windows Explorer.

You are using the workaround for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista 64-bi, which indeed requires to invoke 32-bit version of Windows Explorer to access ClearCase.

You can define a shortcut on the desktop, instead of putting it in a .cmd file, as mentioned in the last answer of this thread, and detailed in this document:

It is important to launch this as a separate process from the Windows desktop.
In order to do that, you must specify the ‘/separate‘ parameter to Explorer.
You can create a shortcut to launch the 32-bit Explorer by doing the following
(Note: The following steps have not been shown to work on all versions of Windows.):

1. Right-click on your Windows desktop, selecting New and Shortcut.
2. Specify %windir%\SysWoW64\explorer.exe /separate as the location for the target.
   You might want to add an initial directory for it to open as well.
   In this example case, we want to use it to copy files to my Windows desktop so the following is used as the location for the shortcut:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\explorer.exe /separate, c:\users\username\desktop /min

In this example, C:\users\username\desktop is the location where Windows 2008 Server saves the user’s desktop.
Users, can then click on this icon and drag and drop spooled files and stream files into it, and they appear on the desktop.

There can be some confusion about whether or not an application is running is a 32-bit or 64-bit application. The Windows task manager can be used to identify 32-bit applications though.
If you have the Navigator and the 32-bit Windows Explorer running on a 64-bit version of Windows and open the task manager (press Ctrl+Shift+Esc), you will notice that the 32-bit applications have ‘*32‘ after the Image Name.

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Note the final /min option, that the OP emptyshell details in the comment:

Without the /min, a command window will also pop up.
With the /win, no command window pops up.

I also discovered that if, in the windows explorer properties, Select Tools, Select Folder Options, Select View Tab, "Launch folder windows in a separate process" is selected, then:
if a person double clicks on C:\Windows\SysWoW64\explorer the ClearCase context menus will be there.
That would be because SysWoW64\explorer is launched as a separate process which is needed for context menus to work with the 32 Bit version of explorer. (Equivalent to the /seperate switch in the command line).