Flutterby™! : Windowns and Acrobat - what a pair

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Windowns and Acrobat - what a pair

2011-07-13 13:21:36.921983+00 by andylyke 6 comments

I've got an interesting problem - on a Win 7 machine, adobe acrobat has been set as the default handler for .lnk (shortcut) files. So every link on my desktop looks like acrobat, and clicking one launches acrobat, which tells me that filename.exe, the target of the shortcut, isn't a pdf. This just began, and 3 uninstall/ reinstall cycles hasn't changed the situation. (With Acrobat gone, the shortcuts work just fine..)

The set default programs shows that acrobat is the default handler for .lnk files. I could change defaults, but can't find a way to restore the working mode which is that .lnk shows up as "Shortcut" with "Unknown Application".

Does anybody in Flutterbyland have insight?

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Television ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-13 17:12:04.649824+00 by: meuon

Many moons and versions ago I used "winfile" or "winfile.exe" to manage those associations. Used to have to run from from "Run->Command". Can you even do that with Win7? The whole idea of file extensions to manage what programs do what is such an arcane thought, yet we have stuck with it for a long time. In M$-land anyway. I like the basic idea, it just has so many gnarly exceptions and security implications. Just like all the other methods.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-13 18:26:52.882209+00 by: ebradway

Use the Windows System Restore to roll back to before the .lnk got associated with Acrobat. Uninstall Acrobat. Install Foxit.

And yeah, using file extensions to manage associations suck. So does not actually support symlinks in your file system so you have to use .lnk files.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-14 01:38:03.092684+00 by: andylyke

Thanks to both of you! I'm off to try.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-14 02:17:43.166833+00 by: Jeff Cuscutis

You might want to see this for restoring the .lnk file associations: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/1720 53

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-15 10:41:38.247335+00 by: andylyke [edit history]

Thanks too you, too, Jeff. Just for info - winfile doesn't exist on Win 7. I rolled back a week and now everything's fine. Jeff's recommendation led to editing the registry, something I've done in the past, but with great trepidation.

Again, thanks to all!

#Comment Re: made: 2011-07-17 10:25:35.208313+00 by: andylyke [edit history]