Activate IE Add-Ons from an BHO

Question

I've written two objects, a deskband toolbar and a bho for IE. The goal is that the bho shows up the toolbar after installation. Microsoft's approach is to use pBrowser->ShowBrowserBar(&vtBandGUID, &vtShow, 0);

This method is nice to show and hide toolbars which got already activated via the addon manager but does not work for deactivated addons. Is there a way to do exactly the same thing as the addon manager does (enabling / disabling specific addons) just programmatically?

Answer 1

You should clarify your question.

Writing code to activate add-ons that the user has specifically disabled could be considered malicious behavior and could result in the application in question being marked as malware.

Answer 2

You can enable/disable BHOs by adding/removing a DWORD registry value called "Flags" with a value of 1 to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\<BHO CLSID>

Answer 3

Also, the 0 value of Flags means enabled. 1 means disabled.

Sometimes other values than 1 are entered (for example 256).

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\<BHO CLSID>