Loading icons from other programs

I'm trying to make a file view which uses icons taken from the registry. In HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT most (all?) types have a DefaultIcon key on the format "XXX.dll, 2" or similar. My guess is that the first part is the exe/dll the icon lies in and the second is some kind of resource id.

Anyway, most of the times I'm unable to load the icon using the code below (sometimes it works but it's very rare). LoadLibrary succeeds but LoadIcon returns NULL. What am I doing wrong/missing?

Code:

---

HINSTANCE L = LoadLibrary("C:\\Program\\WinZip\\winzip32.exe");
HICON I = LoadIcon(L, MAKEINTRESOURCE(0));

---

(the DefaultIcon for zip-files are "C:\Program\WinZip\winzip32.exe, 0")

Footnote: Changing 0 to 1 makes it load a zip-icon...

EDIT: The error code is 1813 - "The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file." btw...

Just a guess: ExtractIcon

I'm actually interested in knowing how to do this for a project I'm working on. So you can find different file extensions in the registry, and it has a dll or exe file listed?

Edit: Or maybe this would work even better

ExtractIcon seems to work just fine, way less code too.

You're linking to the same LoadIcon page all the time btw :)

Oh what the...My second link was 10x better. Try ExtractAssociatedIcon instead.

Yes, it saves some regedit trouble but it seems it cannot retrieve the icon from just an extention, it needs a physical existing file which is not (always) the case for me.

Well for me that works a lot better since the file will always exist :)

To retrieve an icon for an extension or file, the recommended function is SHGetFileInfo with SHGFI_ICON. This function has options to control different properties such as icon size, highlight, and whether the shortcut overlay is added.

Ok, all these methods seems to be able to load the icon fine but I'm having troubles adding the icons to a HIMAGELIST structure. I'm pretty sure it's a mismatch in the icon formats somewhere but how can you 'transform' the icon to a small icon with the proper color format?

The ImageList_AddIcon fails every time:

Code:

---

IconList = ImageList_Create(GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSMICON), GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSMICON), ILC_COLOR8 | ILC_MASK, 0, IconContainer.GetSize());

Size = IconContainer.GetSize();
for(i = 0; i < Size; i++)
{
  Index = ImageList_AddIcon(IconList, IconContainer[i]);
}

---

I've gotten it to work better now. However SHGetFileInfo doesn't seem to recognize html extentions and some of the icons have black artifacts in them (see screenie). Ideas?

http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/111...creenie0wr.png

Those are likely to be the winxp kiddie style icons (ones with drop shadow etc.) - they should probably render properly if your app uses a manifest, either as a compiled resource or external file.

I don't understand what you mean, what's a manifest?

Using winxp visual styles. Search this board, too, as I believe you may find some explicit examples.

Without a manifest, xp style icons look horrible(like in your image) but should render properly with the manifest.