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Most program shown in Control Panel are appointed a CLSID which is present in registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace

After I installed NVIDIA PhysX Driver, a Control Panel entry called "NVIDIA PhysX (32-bit)" is created, yet no CLSID regarding the program is added to ControlPanel\NameSpace. I tried to figure out where the entry comes from by searching "NVIDIA PhysX" throughout the registry but there are too many of them, I can't be sure which one is relative.

One thing unusual about this entry is that the program is located in

C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\

PS: I ask this question because the icon of this entry is not shown correctly (just an icon of a file without arranged program is shown), which pisses me off and I want to correct.

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1 Answer 1

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If you take the GUID from the key and search under HKCR you will find the correct entry. For example:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{0bbca823-e77d-419e-9a44-5adec2c8eeb0}

Is the entry for Nvidia Control Panel. When you click on this Control Panel item it launches the application C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel Client\nvcplui.exe as this is referenced under:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0bbca823-e77d-419e-9a44-5adec2c8eeb0}\Shell\Open\Command

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  • There's no such CLSID in my Registry. I believe the CLSID is randomly generated and different in each computer. Plus this entry is not related to NVIDIA Driver but NVIDIA PhysX Program, which is required to run Dragon Age Origins. My computer has AMD GPU so no NVIDIA Driver is installed.
    – user167420
    Commented Dec 21, 2019 at 1:40
  • That was just an example. If you launch "NVIDIA PhysX (32-bit)" from the control panel, then run a tool such as Process Explorer to identify the process name, then search HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for that process do you find it?
    – HelpingHand
    Commented Dec 21, 2019 at 1:48
  • It's the program in the path I mentioned in the question -- C:\Windows\SysWOW64\PhysXCplUI.exe I searched for the file name yet still yield no result under CLSID.
    – user167420
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 11:59
  • Have you tried searching under hkcr for PhysXcplui.exe? That said, it could be that there is a small stub application that launches it so it might be worth running Process Monitor when you launch the application from Control Panel, this was you can see the registry keys and the process creation/start events to be sure what is going on.
    – HelpingHand
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 12:03
  • The launcher in Control Panel does indeed point to that application: the program requires Admin privilege to run, so upon clicking it the UAC dialogue window shows the executable path as C:\Windows\SysWOW64\PhysXCplUi.exe
    – user167420
    Commented Dec 27, 2019 at 14:02

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