SHELL32 Versions

The main shell module (SHELL32.DLL) has so far existed in nine variations considered by Microsoft to have sufficient external impact to deserve at least a difference in the minor version number.

No distribution with Windows, NT or Internet Explorer is shown for version 1.30 because all copies inspected were found on disks for other products (specifically, for Win32s as redistributed with various packages for Windows programming). Versions 1.30 and 3.51 predate my experience with 32-bit user-mode Windows and have been included in this study mostly for curiosity. They also predate what has become for most users the essential look and feel of Windows, i.e., the taskbar and Start menu. Yet these versions are 32-bit executables, they are named SHELL32.DLL (in contrast to the 16-bit SHELL.DLL), and there is demonstrable continuity.

Version 5.50 is omitted from the presumably authoritative review of shell DLL versions that Microsoft presents on the page Shell and Common Controls Versions in the MSDN Library. That page also says that “Version 5.0 of Shell32.dll will be distributed with … Windows Me”, and although it may be what was once planned, it is demonstrably not how the release turned out.

Builds

Though the next table fusses over such details as build numbers and dates, it is certainly not meant as a comprehensive list even of builds that had formal, public releases. For that, consult Microsoft, who manufacture the software and are surely best able of anyone to present a definitive record. Bear in mind, however, that if Microsoft’s published documentation could sensibly be relied on as either comprehensive or accurate, then you could not now be reading these notes.

Builds are arranged in increasing order of the file version as recorded in the executable’s resources. This version number is readily visible using Windows Explorer either in a so-called infotip for the file or by accessing the Version tab in the Properties dialog for the file. Programmers know this version number as coming from the so-called root block of the version-information resource, specifically from the dwFileVersionMS and dwFileVersionLS members of a VS_FIXEDFILEINFO structure.

The date stamp shown for each version is more obscure. File dates are easily modified after the executable is built and are anyway liable to be shown differently when read from different time zones. However, there is in each executable’s header a date stamp which is set when the executable is built and which is not commonly changed afterwards. It is readily accessible to anyone with programming knowledge and appropriate tools, e.g., Microsoft’s own DUMPBIN utility.

The two Win32s versions cited above have headers that are not entirely compatible with modern expectations, so that although a resource directory can be identified, and the build numbers found in the relevant structure, they are not found for display in the Windows Explorer (e.g., in an infotip).

For Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, the binaries are identical, byte for byte.