reference a windows shell interface using .net 4.0

Question

I am using the following code to reference a shell dll

            Type t = Type.GetTypeFromProgID(\"Shell.Application\");

            Shell s = (Shell)Acti         


        

Answer 1

Instead of

Type t = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Shell.Application");

dynamic shell = Activator.CreateInstance(t);

I used

var shell = (IShellDispatch4) new Shell();

shell.Namespace then works as expected.

Turns out that reference for a shell object defaults to IShellDispatch5, which can't be used in XP or 2003.