If you’ve ever clicked on some file in Windows and seen this dialog box, you know what I’m talking about:
The web service is completely useless, and most of the time you already know what program you want to use to open the file. Luckily, it is easy to disable this dialog box with Default Programs Editor (download). Simply launch the program, and click on the Options button:
Options button
Then, click the button that says
Disable 'Search web for unknown extension' Dialog Box
Disable 'Search web for unknown extension' Dialog Box
And that’s it!
Now, when you try to open a file with an unknown extension, Windows will skip the unknown extension dialog and display the “Open With…” window to choose a program.
This is an advanced Windows file association utility
Here is some sweet stuff you can do with it:
- Manually add extension information
- Change a file type’s description
- Change a file type’s icon
- Change an extension’s associated file type
- Add/Edit/Delete an extension’s default association
- Add/Edit/Delete other entries on the file’s context menu
- Preserve verb precedence hierarchy
- View shell extension entries on the context menu
- Remove ‘Default Programs’ association that Windows likes to make annoying to change
- Add/Edit/Delete your own autoplay handlers
- Change which autoplay options are available for users
- Disable that “Search web for unknown extension” dialog
- Single .exe utility, no installation
On top of all that, here are some bonus features:
- Make changes direct to the registry, or export them as .reg files for easy distribution
- Designed for Vista, with UAC support, so you can painlessly run as a standard user
- Works with XP too (a few features disabled, just use TweakUI)
- Make changes to your user account, or the machine default, or both
Documentation is admittedly sparse right now, but here are some how-to’s:
Feel free to email me with any suggestions or questions.
Download
Here is a little utility to turn “XMouse” behavior on and off. This means that when you hover the mouse over a window, that window becomes activated, but doesn’t come to the front. It’s handy to scroll background windows. Requires .Net 2.0.
Download
As it turns out, this is possible, it’s just a simple registry tweak.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AutoComplete]
"Append Completion"="Yes"
If you’re not in the mood to manually edit your registry, I’ve put that into this handy registry key file.
Download
