Extra Window on "Open with..."

firstclermont,

If when you right-click and select "Open with" you get a short list of programs on a window with a "Choose program" link at the bottom, that is normal behavior. Windows offers a list of likely programs on the first window and the "Choose program" link is avialable if the desired program is not on the list or if the user wishes to establish an association by using the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" option.

Thanks for the quick responses, but there is a window before the program list that pops up.

1. I right-click file, and click "open with..."

2. A window with "Use the Web Service..." or "Select Program from List" pops up - I select the latter

3. The program list pops up.

Step 2 is painfully and horribly unnecessary.  Never occurred in Win2k.

The intermediate window (showing several  programs and at the bottom 'choose program') occurs when you have more than one application that has been previously used to open a particular file type, or in some cases, applications that Windows knows are compatible (e.g. both Notepad and Wordpad appear for .txt files by default).

If you are comfortable editing the registry, (start, run, type regedit, click OK) the information is stored at

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3090935711-3204504469-1825801191-1007\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.fileextension\OpenWithList, where fileextension stands for the three character file extension of interest.

For example, for .txt files, look at

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3090935711-3204504469-1825801191-1007\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.txt\OpenWithList

I have a whole series of applications that I've used at one time or another to open text files, including Word, Excel, IE, Notepad, Wordpad, each appears as a value in the right hand pane (labelled a, b, etc.)

If none or only one is listed, the intermediate window generally does not appear, but the listed app appears under 'Recommended programs' (the one that the file type is associated with and that opens the file when you double click on it).

You can delete the values in the right pane of .fileextension\OpenWithList (except the default value). In most cases that will eliminate the intermediate window (except the ones where Windows knows of more than one app by default).

The application that opens the file type by double click is registered elsewhere, and the information pointing to it is in the OpenWithProgids subkey below the OpenWithList key for each file extension.  Don't touch the value in that key.

firstclermont,

That should happen in XP only if the file type is unknown and not represented in the File Types listing. The problem may be due to virus activity or spyware. I don't know of any way to rebuild the default associations in File Types in Explorer.

The file type is unknown.  We receive files with no extension or random 3 character extension that we will open with generally one of three programs.  Normally, we right click on the file and select the applicable program.  It's bad enough that the intermediary screen appears, but it's defaulted to "Use the Web Service..." that we would need to toggle that radio button over to "Select the Program..." before hitting OK to then get to the program list.  It sounds petty but we have 80 users from whom I am trying to minimize disgruntled feedback.

I experimented with a text file that I gave an unassociated file extension, test.xyz. In Windows Explorer, first time I right clicked on it, there was no 'open with' in the right hand menu, only 'open'. That brought up the box you mention (use web.., Select program..). I chose select the program, chose notepad, checked the box 'always use the selected program to open files of this type (that associates .xyz with Notepad for double click opening). Closed the file, right click on it, now 'open with' is on the context menu (as well as open). click on 'open with', this shows Notepad and 'choose program', clicked the latter, selected Wordpad (leaving box at bottom unchecked), this opened ther file in Wordpad. Close file, right click on it, click open with now this shows both notepad and Wordpad as well as choose program. Repeated with a third program (Word). Now right click, open with shows the 3 apps.

So my suggestion is that for each type of files you want to open with one of your 3 programs, You do the analogue of the above, choosing first one, then the second, then the third program.

Of course, if the extensions are truly random and seldom repeat, that is not very practical. In that case I don't know of a workaround, except possibly, if the file extensions are random three characters but all open with one of your 3 programs, you could rename them all to a common file extension? What generates the random file extensions??