Restore a file association in Windows Vista

 

Don’t ask me how I did it – it has been one of those weeks! but I somehow associated zip files with Photoshop. So, every time I needed to extract the contents of a zip file Photoshop would open and gag on the file – not unsurprising but very annoying.

A fix was required. The solution is in the Registry but it’s not hard to find or to fix. You do need to have your wits about you and never touch anything you don’t understand. Oh! and back up your registry before you start playing with it.

Choose Start > Run > type REGEDIT and click OK and then, when the warning comes up, click Continue. You have to be an admin to use this tool.

Navigate to find this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\

and then locate the extension causing issues, in my case zip

Then find the UserChoice option under this, right click and choose Delete. This removes any custom choice and returns your association to what it was when Vista was first installed. Problem solved!

Finally, choose File> Exit to exit the registry editor.