15th January 2002
File associations, much like average American birds, sometimes fly south for the winter. Getting them back may be no easy task, as evidenced in a recent GnomeTIP Registry hack. Keith Edgette, a curious Gnomie, voiced his concern: "If you're not able to run EXE files, then your Registry editor won't work either, will it? If the Registry editor can provide the solution, is there a trick to getting into it? I've had this problem before, and the only way I was able to correct it was to use one of the Registry 'backups' that Windows made." Good question, Keith. Here's how you'd get around it: drop to a command / DOS prompt, navigate to wherever REGEDIT.EXE is located (usually in the System directory), and enter: "REN REGEDIT.EXE REGEDIT.COM" (sans quotes). Or, simply rename REGEDIT.EXE to REGEDIT.COM within Windows. To do this, you'll need to turn off the hiding of registered file extensions: open Windows Explorer | Tools | Folder Options | View | Hide extensions for known file types. You could also download a third- party registry editor. In any case, you'll be able to fix the default "application" association.