StevenWhiting.com

Need both these posts first one is only if the user is a domain user and has regedit locked down.

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http://stevenwhiting.com/blog/?p=1306

Found by Phaz

Run cmd

whoami /all

Find their SID

Run regedit as admin and go to HKEY_USERS

Find their SID and edit whatever is needed.

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http://www.technologynext.org/lnk-file-association-fix/

Manually fixing the registry

This is yet another way to fix the issue. Follow these steps:

1. Click on the “Start Menu”, type regedit in “Search Programs and files” and hit Enter. If that doesn’t work, go to C: drive -> Windows and then double click on regedit.exe.

2. Navigate to following location in registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.lnk

3. Expand this registry branch by clicking on the arrow. Delete the “UserChoice” sub-key.

4. Close the Registry editor and restart your PC.

Had a PC with XP installed on D with the programs.

Needed to wipe PC so took backup of users profile.

Wiped and reloaded XP to be on C.  After user logged in once, copied old profile back over.

Trying to associate a .asc file to open in excel refused to work.  Open With would allow you to browse to where office was installed, select Excel OK but it then still wouldn’t appear in list.

Turns out this is due to copying the profile over from the old setup.  That profile still sees some programs as being installed on D and sticks these entries in the registry, despite D no longer existing.

You can go to (in this example its Excel):

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\Excel\shell\open\command

When I got there, sure enough, it was pointing to the D drive for the Excel install.  Changed this to C and fixed the issue.

Archaeous post on this thread helped:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproui/thread/3ddd2350-6323-4f3c-9377-dba0acb53a33

This program may also be useful

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/openwithadd.htm