Can not save associations

[mjutras]

Hi,
I am unable to save any new file types associations
I deleted the BAT association by mistake and I can not restore it.

Any one know if a program to fix this and restore my defauls file associations is available?

thanks

[Staff]

For the .BAT file see here...

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

As to the rest, please be a bit more specific about what you did.

[mjutras]

Ok I will try to make this as short as I can but detailled enough.
To start off, my file associations for .TXT was Wordpad and I tried to change it to Notepad. I tried to choose "Open with", (notepad not beeing in the program list) I browsed to notepad.exe and checked "Always use the selected program" and It opened this text file with notepad.
After trying again to open another text file it went back to Wordpad.
By choosing "open with", the notepad was not in the list of programs, I had to browse again. I tried to go to the registered File types and delete the TXT and recreate it with no success. I tried modifying the BAT file association and ruined it. Looks like any changes are not saved to the file associations module unless it is someting that I delete.
The link you sent me fixed part of my BAT file, by double-clicking on a batch file now runs the file as it should but the BAT doesn't appear in the Registered File types list and if I right-click on a BAT filde and choose "Edit" nothing happens.
If on the File types I try to add it, it tells me that it is already there and it then shows up at the top of the list. If I close the File types and open it again the BAT is not showing in the registered file types.

I am using Windows XP Pro with SP2.

Thanks again for your help

[Staff]

In most cases the extension/file type association is recorded in the registry's HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT location. If you open the registry editor and look there you'll see a long list of file extensions appearing first and each one will have some default associated with it and that's that. Those are the ones that will typically show up with you open the Explorer Tools|Folder Options|File Types command. That's typically also where the information is recorded when you right click on something and tell Windows to Open With a program.

But, that's not the only place Windows stores such associations (would that it were that simple). If you scroll down to some of those items you will see long strings of numbers associated with some items. These are handlers and making your way through those to figure out the convoluted path is, well, difficult (at least for me).

That's basically what's happening with your .TXT association. It's embedded into the registry in multiple places, often using those long strings of numbers and letters (hex numbers) as a reference instead of something you can read. I can't tell you exactly how to fix things as you want them as it involves changing all that stuff.

You might try one of the programs listed in this FAQ (Associate This! or File Type Manager to help you however. The authors have figured out all that information and the programs help you to handle it...

http://filext.com/info/showthread.php?t=23

Best I can do at the moment.