Cannot associate a program with a specific file extension.

This is a very weird issue I'm having, and it appears to only be affecting a specific application. I believe I know what the problem is, but I still need help.

If this is in the wrong forum please move the topic. This forum seemed the most relevant.

The problem I'm having is that I cannot assign a specific application to be the default program for opening files. The particular application is photoshop, and naturally my concern is .PSD, and .TIF files.

I can open the files through photoshop just fine. That's not the issue. My problem is I cannot open the files from windows explorer. It's not a huge issue, but one that annoys me.

I've tried several times to use the "Open With..." option by right clicking on the files and selecting photoshop.exe (I've tried both the 32, and 64 bit versions. Both were installed) and nothing happens. Nothing shows up in the menu. I've tried this through both right clicking, and going through the program options and trying to specifically assign the program to .PSD/.TIF

Now to where I think the problem came from. I believe I caused it when installing photoshop. Due to another issue on my computer I was forced to do a system restore. This ended up botching my photoshop install and I attempted to reinstall it.

This happened withing close proximity to me switching from CS3 to CS4. I had uninstalled CS3 prior to the restore, but the only restore point I had to go back to was previous to CS3's uninstall.

After the restore I could not uninstall CS3. This was giving me issues installing CS4 again, because the restore uninstalled it. After searching around I made attempts to manually remove the CS3 install and was able to. This involved deleting the photoshop installation keys from the registry. I took every measure I could to remove all adobe programs from my computer outside of flash player and reader.

It worked, and I was able to install the CS4 collection again. All my other suit programs work fine. Photoshop cannot be assigned as the default program for an extension now.

There is an issue with bridge, but I assume it to be directly related to photoshop's issue. I receive an error when attempting to import a file from bridge to photoshop. All other applications work fine.


I can only hope this makes sense to someone. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Right Windows 7 64-bit Professional.

 

Try using Set Associations to do this.

Click Start then type "Set associations" (w/out the quotes)
In the list that appears, click "Make a file type always open in a specific program"

A control panel window will open, and a list of extensions will populate.

When the list is populated, find the extension you want Photoshop to open. Click "Change Program" and click Photoshop in the list. If it's not found in the list, browse to the folder containing the Photoshop application. (I'm not sure where this is exactly since I don't have Photoshop-probably in the Program Files (X86) or Program Files folders)

Hope this helps out,

Ricky

 

I appreciate the effort, but unfortunately I've tried that as well. The result is when I find the extension I'm searching for (in this case .PSD) it brings up the same menu that right clicking and using "Open With..." does.

Same problem, doesn't show up after I find the exe through the browse option. As if I've done nothing at all.

 

I have exactly the same problem, althouth with another program.
Have you meanwhile found the solution? I would be very grateful.
This is, indeed, a very strange behavior. Your description is sufficient, so I won't repeat my specific case.

I managed to solve the problem as follows: (working on Windows Vista)
- open regedit program for browsing through the registry.
- search for the name of the programm or application that you want to associated with the extension
- in my case, the programm occurred several times in the registry
-for each occurrence in the registry: check whether the data refers to a valid .exe file location
- in my case, it referred to a non-existent, older version of the programm
- be careful when editing the registry. Make a backup with file --> export first.
- edit the erroneous registry entries
- close regedit, and associate the extension with the program in the normal way.

It looks like a very stupid thing of windows again!

Maybe some registry cleaner programm could do the same trick for you, without the risky manual editing of the registry.