I am trying to set up an application on a Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop server. It is a fairly old application, and we are moving it from desktops to a terminal server (.....long story......domains merging.......legacy apps). There is a component of the application which just refuses to play nice. The application is a document management system (TechnologyOne ECM), and when you install it it adds a 'Send To' entry to Explorer. The idea is you right-click a file, select Send To ECM, and ECM opens up with the file ready to be registered.
The 'Send To' entry isn't a normal part of the application install - you need to do a custom install and select it - but on the image we apply to our PCs it wasn't installed, so whenever we re-image a PC we just uninstall this application, reinstall it and the missing Send To target works just fine. But I can't get it to work on a terminal server. I have tried the uninstall/reinstall trick, but this does not help. I have created a brand new VM and installed the application fresh, but this hasn't worked either I have grabbed a copy of ShellExView and I can see that this component is listed as an installed shell extension. What normally happens on a PC is when a user first logs on, setup for this shell extension is triggered and the appropriate entry is added to the Send To menu. On a terminal server, this first-logon process does not seem to be being triggered for anyone other than the first user to log on.
I logged onto the terminal server as admin, and did a regsvr32 on the dll in question. The next time a user logged on to the terminal server, the first-logon process was triggered and the Send To entry was properly added and configured for that user, and that user was able to right-click a file, select Send To ECM and ECM opened as it should.
However, the first-logon process has not run for ANY subsequent users logging onto the terminal server. I am at my wit's end.....I have spent hours combing through Process Monitor logs......countless uninstall/reinstalls.......countless rebuilding-of-the-terminal-server-and-start-again episodes. Nothing I seem to do will make this shell extension register properly for anyone other than the first user of the terminal server.
If anyone has any ideas I would be most grateful.