How to avoid the "Windows cannot open this file" dialog

[Guest]

Is there a way to stop the obnoxious "Windows cannot open this file" dialog
from popping up when selecting and unknown extension and cause Windows to
always choose a program from the list? I NEVER EVER want to attempt to
surf the web to find a program to open a file and I would like to avoid this
obnoxious and unnecessary step caused by this dialog (really obnoxious
because it defaults to search the web). I know how to do this for any
particular file extension, I would like to a) turn it off for ANY unknown
extension, and more importantly b) turn it off for files that don't have an
extension. I unfortunately have several programs which generate various
extensionless files (which must remain extensionless for the apps to work);
since they are just text files, I'd rather associate notepad or textpad with
them so I can quickly view them; even having the program list pop up by
default would be okay.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Skip the file association Web service dialog while opening a unknown file
type
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/nowebservice.htm

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Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In