[gclist] Ref counts in Windoze??

[Henry G. Baker]

>From another discussion list:

> > I *think* that any DLL's that aren't within the applications root directory
> > structure receive this message when deleting the application with the
> > add/remove
> > tool.  For instance, many applications put .DLL's in the windows or
> > windows/system directory.  The warning basically informs you that, as far as
> > Windows knows, no other application is using this file, so it should, maybe,
> > hopefully, be safe to delete, but maybe not.  How the heck am *I* supposed to
> > know??
> 
> If you look in the Windows registry (regedit.exe), there are reference
> counts for files that have been installed in the system directories. If all
> installed applications follow the rules, it is safe to delete the file when
> the reference count is decremented to zero. The installer should increment
> the reference counts and the deinstaller should decrement the reference
> counts. This is probably written up somewhere in MSDN. I think it can get
> fouled up when a new version of an application is installed over an older
> version of the application without deinstalling the old version.