File Associations

[OutLawTorn]

Hi ladies and gents,

just having a recurring problem with pdf files. We are using Windows XP machines on a Windows 2003 server domain, and use Altiris to deploy software.

Whenever staff members try to open PDF files, it defaults to opening them in Photoshop. If they right-click on the files and go through the choose program steps, even if they click the "always use this program as default" option it still eventually goes back to photoshop, even if no new software has been deployed to the workstations.

Does anyone have a script or registry key we could setup to run on startup, to re-associate the files with acrobat?

Thanks,
Olt

[srochford]

Look at the ftype and assoc command.

If you type
assoc .pdf
you should see that a PDF is an "AcroExch.document" and if you then type
ftype AcroExch.document
you will see what app is being used to open such a file - I'm guessing you'll find Photoshop.

To fix it, add something to the machine startup script to call:

ftype AcroExch.document="C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe" "%1

(but check where Acrobat Reader actually is!)

[OutLawTorn]

Thanks for your help.

The command works to change the path, however could not get it to script. Using a batch file, it ignores the %1 at the end, and adding it as itself in a GPO as a startup script and it doesn't seem to be applied (yet an existing logon script in the same GPO still runs).

[kearton]

I might be wrong, but if you're using parameters (eg %1) from within a script instead of command line, you need to add another % (eg %%1)

???

[srochford]

Yes - double up the % sign in a batch file (that almost always gets me; I test things out just at a prompt and then paste into the batch file which then doesn't work ...)

[OutLawTorn]

This did the trick, thanks all

[kearton]

i guess my old grey matter isn't as addled as I thought