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How to: Update the Registration for the Host Application

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If you change any of the entries or subkeys under the host configuration key after you register the application with Visual Studio Tools for Applications, you must update the registration by regenerating the host context registry hive. Otherwise, Visual Studio Tools for Applications will not be aware of the changes that you made to the host configuration key.

For more information about the host configuration key, see Registering the Host Application. For more information about host configuration subkeys and entries, see Host Configuration Registry Key Settings.

To update the registration

  1. Click Start, and then click Run.

  2. Type regedit, and then press ENTER.

  3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the host context registry hive for your application:

    • On 32-bit platforms:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VSTAHost\hostID\9.0

    • On 64-bit platforms:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VSTAHost\hostID\9.0

    The name of the hostID key is the same host ID string that you used to identify your host application when you first registered it. For more information, see How to: Register the Host Application.

  4. Delete the 9.0 key under the hostID key.

    Warning

    If there are other keys under the hostID key, make sure that you delete only the 9.0 key. Other keys are used by other versions of Visual Studio Tools for Applications.

  5. Open the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt window and change to the following directory: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9\Common7\IDE\.

  6. Type the following command, and then press ENTER.

    vsta.exe /setup

    This command recreates the host context hive that you deleted earlier (the 9.0 key). The new host context hive includes the changes you made to the host configuration key.

    If you modified the VSCSProjectTemplatesLocation, VSCSProjectTemplatesLocation, or VSItemTemplatesLocation entries, you must also run the following command to unpack the templates to the appropriate cache directory for Visual Studio 2008.

    devenv.exe /setup

See Also

Tasks

How to: Register the Host Application

Concepts

Registering the Host Application

Host Configuration Registry Key Settings

Creating Project Templates (Visual Studio Tools for Applications)