Vista File Associations

[Mr Snrub]

When I double click the .gal file, Windows does prompt me to select a program to open it. However, after clicking the browse button and find the Gallery.exe, after selecting it and double clicking it, nothing happened. It just returns me to the previous dialog box, asking me to select a program again.

Admittedly I'm doing this test on Win7, not Vista, but the principle should be the same...

I created a file on my desktop named test.gal, then copied Notepad.exe to gallery.exe on my desktop.

I double-clicked test.gal and got prompted with the following:

Windows can't open this file:

File: test.gal

To open this file, Windows needs to know what program you want to use to open it. Windows can go online to look it up automatically, or you can manually select from a list of programs that are installed on your computer.

What do you want to do?

(x) Use the Web service to find the correct program

( ) Select a program from a list of installed programs

I selected the second option and clicked OK, then I got the "Open with" dialogue window:

Choose the program you want to use to open this file:

File: test.gal

HHD Software Hex Editor Neo (x64)

Internet Explorer

IrfanView

Notepad

Paint

Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer

Windows Media Center

Windows Media Player

Windows Photo Viewer

WordPad

Type a description that you want to use for this kind of file:

[x] Always use the selected program to open this kind of file

[browse]

(The list of programs is built from apps registered in Windows through an installer, so it's unlikely to be the same on any 2 machines.)

I clicked the Browse button and navigated to my Desktop folder, then double-clicked on the gallery.exe icon - I was returned to the previous "Open with" dialogue now with th additional icon selected (it had the icon and name for "Notepad" as this comes out of the PE header, not the exectuable name).

I clicked OK and the icon for the file on my desktop changed to that of Notepad, indicating the new association had worked.

I double-clicked the file and it opened in Notepad.

I ran Task Manager and on the Processes tab I verified the command line for the process was C:\Users\{user}\Desktop\gallery.exe (not C:\Windows\Notepad.exe).

So when you go through the process of selecting gallery.exe and get returned to the "Open with" dialogue, it hasn't added Gallery to that list and selected it for you?

[hwtan]

Choose the program you want to use to open this file:

File: test.gal

HHD Software Hex Editor Neo (x64)

Internet Explorer

IrfanView

Notepad

Paint

Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer

Windows Media Center

Windows Media Player

Windows Photo Viewer

WordPad

Type a description that you want to use for this kind of file:

[x] Always use the selected program to open this kind of file

[browse]

(The list of programs is built from apps registered in Windows through an installer, so it's unlikely to be the same on any 2 machines.)

I clicked the Browse button and navigated to my Desktop folder, then double-clicked on the gallery.exe icon - I was returned to the previous "Open with" dialogue now with th additional icon selected (it had the icon and name for "Notepad" as this comes out of the PE header, not the exectuable name).

Since Gallery.exe is a win32s program, I am not able to install it through its installer (it runs without installation nevertheless). So, it is not registered in Windows. So, after I "double-clicked on the gallery.exe icon - I was returned to the previous "Open with" dialogue" but without the additional icon! That is why I have to resort to regedit.

[Mr Snrub]

Is there anything special about the location of gallery.exe?

Is it on a removable drive, a UNC path, a folder with a custom ACL?

I would test by renaming gallery.exe to temp.exe, then copy notepad.exe to where gallery.exe was and go through the test again - if the second Notepad entry appears then it would appear to be something up with gallery.exe itself (and you could afterwards close the Notepad-that-is-gallery.exe, delete it and rename temp.exe back to gallery.exe).

[hwtan]

Thank you Mr Snrub for all your help. I finally get it done! Horay!

In the process of finding the problem with your guidance I notice that I did a mistake earlier by associating .gal with another program MGAPAK.exe which refuse to go away and for some strange reasons disallowed me to re-associate .gal with gallery.exe.

So, to test, I made a copy of gallery.exe, named gallery - copy.exe (windows' generated default name) and managed to associated it with .gal. Then I deleted the original gallery.exe and rename the gallery - copy.exe back to gallery.exe and try to associate .gal with it but failed. Very very strange! I therefore dig into registry, get rid of all .gal key. But still no luck. In the process I notice some registry values contain data "gal_auto_file". From this clue I manage to find some gal_auto_file keys and delete them. Only after all these, I am allowed to re-associate the .gal file again.

Thanks once again for your help, effort and your concern.

[Mr Snrub]

No worries, glad you got it sorted out

File association is one of the things I think became a little trickier rather than more intuitive with Vista.

[hwtan]

File association is one of the things I think became a little trickier rather than more intuitive with Vista.

Indeed. While I look into registry, I notice that Vista keep track of almost all the exe files that the user ever runs, including those .exe that does not come with an installer. Nobody knows what Vista has done to all these and what is it for.