Problem with the registry

I've successfully written values and keys to the registry and such, but it's not working the way I want to. I know this question should really be in a Windows Hacking forum or such but I don't know of any. If anyone has already posted this problem before, tell me what you used as search terms to find it (nothing came up when I searched).

Anyways, my goal is to create a new option when you right click on a file (any file). The option is just supposed to open my program, giving the file clicked passed as an argument. My program works fine, but when I go to right click on something, and select the option, I get an error: "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action". The registry stuff I created with my program is this:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\SHA1-Hash

The keyname is "command" and the value is this:
"c:\Documents and Settings\christopher\My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\SHA-1_FileHash\SHA-1_FileHash\Debug\SHA-1_FileHash.exe" "%1"

A few things I've noticed about my registry is that HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell doesn't not exist (until I create it) but shellex does, but it doesn't seem to have any items under the right click menu for files. If anyone has information on this, I would be extremely greatful.

Ok, I finally corrected the problem, took a while though. I'll post it if anyone is interested.