Removing a File Association

Posted by Anthony Trudeau on Geeks with Blogs See other posts from Geeks with Blogs or by Anthony Trudeau
Published on Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:43:03 GMT Indexed on 2012/09/30 3:38 UTC
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I found a rather simple way to remove a file association (default program) tonight that I thought others might find useful.  I found it after discovering that Windows 7 doesn't provide a straight-forward way of removing an association.

Windows 7 provides a nice interface in the Control Panel for changing associations (Programs > Default Programs > Set Associations), but once you have one you cannot get rid of it.  The Registry is an obvious choice, because that's where the associations are stored.  In fact, the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive has the association, but there is also a key you need to delete somewhere in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive.

Doing a little poking around, I discovered a command line program called ASSOC that'll do it.  And typing HELP ASSOC confirms that it was what I was looking for.  The solution to my problem turned out to be as simple as typing ASSOC .BIN="" on the command line.

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