Vista’s Default Programs and The Open With list take back control
Filed under: Interesting Stuff, Windows Tips

When we double clicked on a .PNG image file and up popped the QuickTime PictureViewer at windows vista, it displayed the .PNG image perfectly, but the image to be displayed by Windows Photo Gallery.
If we had been installed Apple QuickTime to view a movie, we must have clicked yes when the installation procedure encouraged us to modify the default programs. This QuickTime had taken over all the default graphic file associations. With this case, we should to take the procedure one step further and remove QuickTime from the Open with list by using a quick Registry edit.
How to Using Default Programs
When we launch the Default Programs tool, we will see that there are four links that allow us to configure how Windows Vista works with programs like:
• Our default programs
• File type associations
• AutoPlay settings
• Computer default programs

Select the file type association option. It associates a File Type or Protocol with a Program. Then scroll through the list of file types until I located .PNG. As we can see, the .PNG file type is linked with QuickTime PictureViewer.

To reset the file type association back to Windows Photo Gallery, we can select the Change Program button. Then, the Open With dialog box displayed. At this point, all we had to do was choose the Always Use The Selected Program To Open This Kind Of File check box and select Windows Photo Gallery from the list. To complete the operation, we just clicked the OK button.

Result Test
Then you can return to Windows Explorer, double-clicked a .PNG file and up popped Windows Photo Gallery. Though, when we right clicked on a .PNG file and accessed the Open With sub menu, we discover that PictureViewer was still linked to the .PNG file type even though it wasn’t set as the default program.

Now, we are not totally against Apple (Even though I’m a PC), but I was annoyed that the program had taken over the .PNG file type and so really wanted to take away all traces of it.
Investigation the Registry
It is five registry keys that have the potential to control the list of programs that display on the Open With sub menu:
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.xxx\OpenWithList
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.xxx \OpenWithProgIDs
• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xxx\ OpenWithList
• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xxx\ OpenWithProgIDs
• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\PType\OpenWithList
Where .xxx is the file extension we are concerned with and PType for a file extension could be audio, image, system, text, or video.
The link between the QuickTime PictureViewer and the Open With sub menu was located in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.png\ OpenWithProgIDs registry key.

The link between the QuickTime PictureViewer and the Open With sub menu, was located in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.png\ OpenWithProgIDs registry key.
After deleting the QuickTime.png Binary Value from the Registry, the QuickTime PictureViewer disappeared from the Open With sub menu. (Make sure that we have a recent backup.)
In most cases, we’ll find the item that we want to remove from the Open With sub menu in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.xxx\OpenWithList registry key as a String Value.

In some cases we may have to delete more than one registry key.

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