How to force a double clicked xml file to open in new window?

[Paul Randall]

I occasionally use Microsofts free File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility
on my WXP SP2 IE6 system. It is a command line that can be used to generate
MD5 or SHA1 checksums for individual files or all files in a folder path.
Optionally the info can be sent to an XML file, which can later be used to
verify that the original files have not been deleted or modified.

A simple xml file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FCIV>
<FILE_ENTRY>
<name>a:\AUTOEXEC.BAT</name>
<MD5>V9KSWZmnqqbJE+bfYnKmGQ==</MD5>
</FILE_ENTRY>
</FCIV>

Occasionally I want to look at the contents of an XML file, and they are
opened in IE6 when I double click them. The problem is that they almost
always open in some already-open IE window. I want them to always open in a
new IE window - when done looking at the xml file, I often accidently close
the window when I really want to go back to what was previously displayed in
the window :-( Hopefully it will be easier to retrain WXP than my fingers.

How can I tell WXP or IE to open XML files in a new window?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

-Paul Randall

 

[Guest]

Paul,

Microsoft Office has it's own XML viewer so does Visual Studio

Why don't you right-click the file | Open With | choose program, choose
notepad & then check the box that makes it the default program for that file
extension? The next time you want to open it you can just double-click it

 

[Paul Randall]

Thanks for your suggestion. FCIV does not put carriage returns or any other
formatting characters into the XML files it generates, so it is difficult to
find what I want in NotePad. I put in the formatting to make it more
understandable in my post. I don't have Office or Visual Studio. IE6
formats it very nicely for me but always wants to grab a currently in-use
window. I think IE is smart enough to be trained to always open a new
window for XML files, but I just don't know the right incantation. It might
be on one of the menus, but some of them have hundreds of options and I have
found no way to 'keep my place' while trying to systematically read every
menu option. Maybe I should search for a way to extract a list of all of
IE's menu structures to a text file :-(

-Paul Randall