Identifying UI Elements After Windows Updates Is Not Possible Any Longer

News Knowledge Base
1

Resolution when Identifying UI Elements after Windows updates is not possible any longer .

Issue description:

After installing Windows Security updates, registry entries corresponding to IAccessible might become corrupt.

Observed Behavior:

Selectors are not generated for applications relying on the IAccessible registry entries, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office components, or even File Explorer.

Other symptoms:

  • It was working but the customer can not conclude what change might have caused this issue
  • The same workflow still runs fine on an other machine with the same setup
  • The issue can be replicated only using the UiExplorer as a standalone tool (also by testing different versions)

This issue is described with the document Identifying UI Elements After Windows Updates .


Root Cause:

  • Corrupt IAccessible registry entries after performing a Windows update.
  • This can also happen because of missing .dll files from SysWoW64 and System32 in the Windows Registry Editor.

Resolution: Should those steps not solve the issue, perform the additional below steps is order to solve the issue,

  1. In order to find a 32-bit Command Prompt go to c:\windows\syswow64\cmd.exe or access %windir%\SysWoW64 and find cmd.exe
  2. Run this with administrator permissions
  3. This should appear in your Task Manager as cmd.exe *32 bit in the Platform column

  1. In order to find a 64-bit Command Prompt go to c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe or access %windir%\System32 and find cmd.exe
  2. Run this with administrator permissions.

Execute the following commands - these commands will register all DLLs from System 32 and SysWow64,

  1. From a 64-bit elevated Command Prompt, execute the command,
  • for %1 in (c:\windows\system32\*.dll) do regsvr32 /s %1

  1. From a 32-bit elevated Command Prompt, execute the command,
  • for %1 in (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\*.dll) do regsvr32 /s %1