Problems with the Open With Dialog

14/11/2007 by swordfish.

Have you ever come across a program that refuses to register properly and therefore does not get added to the ‘Open With’ dialog in Windows XP. So when you right click a file and choose ‘Open With’ the program you want to use is not listed! Normally, you can add a program to the ‘Open With’ dialog using the Browse option. The trouble is that when you browse and locate the .exe file of the program you want to use it does not get added to the ‘Open With’ dialog - no matter how many times you try.

For example we have just purchased Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Fireworks CS3 cannot be made the default program to open .jpg files. Double click on any .jpg and Windows Picture Viewer will open it up.

A search using Google quickly found a great little program called ‘OpenWithAdd’. This was created by a Microsoft professional just to solve this nagging problem. The download was quick as it is only a very small program. You unzip it and double click the ‘OpenWithAdd’ program. This opens a small dialog box where you can select the application to be added to the Open With dialog. You then just click a button to fix the association.

All you have to do then is open a folder e.g. My Documents and click the Tools menu and Folder Options and the File Types Tab. Scroll down to the file extension you want to re-associate with your program and click the change button. This opens the ‘Open With’ dialog so you can now select the program you have just re registered to always open that file type.

This little gem of a program should be in everyone’s PC repair kit. It’s a quick and easy way to register or re-register any program, not just Fireworks CS3.

Download this great repair tool from this site. Or visit http://windowsxp.mvps.org/openwithadd.htm to read more about it.

Return to the main QBS site

Posted in PC tips, Software, Web Site News | Print | No Comments »