Windows XP File Association Web Service
Via Darrell Norton comes one of the best tips ever:
When you open a filetype that is unregistered on your system, you get presented with a time-wasting dialog about if you would like to use a web service to find the appropriate program, or select the program from a list. This tip involves bypassing that dialog and going straight to the Choose Program dialog.
Option 1:
Using the Registry Editor, navigate to HKCU (or HKLM, if you want to make it machine wide)\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. In the right panel, set REG_DWORD InternetOpenWith to 0, creating it if it doesnt exist.
Option 2:
Using the Registry Editor, navigate to HKCU (or HKLM, if you want to make it machine wide)\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System. In the right panel, create a REG_DWORD value named NoInternetOpenWith and set its data to 1.
Enjoy!
Why, O why are there two options that control the same thing?
I’m not going to claim that I understand what goes on in the minds at Microsoft.
I’m going to guess that you can create something for the entire system using Option 2 and then override it with a per-user in Option 1. (Maybe even vice-versa).
Actually, if I had to guess, I’d say the second option can probably be specified at a domain level and overridden on a per-machine basis. But that doesn’t explain why Option 1 exists at all (since you can also specify policies on a per-user basis as well)
That makes even more sense.
The other thing thats bizarre here is that the slight difference in wording between options 1 and 2. Option 1 is InternetOpenWith and option 2 is NoInternetOpenWith.
Given that, it almost seems that option 2 should be used at the domain/machine level, and option 1 should be used to override it.
Maybe??? :=)
Does this work on Server 2003 as well?
I just tested against a Windows 2003 machine, and both options 1 and 2 work.
Thanks!
A Great Tip (and more)