Dizzi's Support Forum

The options on the right click menu to launch another associated program still aren't working for me. No longer an exception, now it simply pops up a dialogue that says "Sorry, cannot start application"

1.0.1.14 hopefully finally fixed that...

Quote from: Dizzi on December 17, 2005, 12:32:38 AM
1.0.1.14 hopefully finally fixed that...

Ummm ... really sorry, but now it says "Sorry, cannot start application <Application Name>"

Is there a log I can look at to see what's going wrong here?  Maybe it's something as simple as spaces in path names?

I'm running XP Home SP2, and the apps I'm trying to launch are Hogsoft's ZPad and Dimension3D's Poser Editor (for example)

Could you check with regedit where the full path for those is stored?

Should be something like \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\xyz.exe\shell\open\command

And what the key's value is? (like "X:\Programs\Appdir\xyz.exe" "%1")

Quote from: Dizzi on December 17, 2005, 01:33:41 PM
Could you check with regedit where the full path for those is stored?

Should be something like \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\xyz.exe\shell\open\command

And what the key's value is? (like "X:\Programs\Appdir\xyz.exe" "%1")

Ah, right!  The light comes on!

It took me a while to figure out what you were doing here. I have never used HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\{.ext}\OpenWithList to get the list of apps that can open a file before. ... tbh I didn't even know it was there!  Anyway, how this has come about I do not know, but I have apps listed in those keys that are NOT defined in HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications - As soon as I started creating my own entries to match the apps in the OpenWith list things started working.

As this has happened to me, perhaps it could happen to somebody else.  Maybe you could check for the matching app key in HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications, and if it isn't there either tell the user that their registry is f**d up, or else allow them to navigate to the executable and create the entries for them.

You shouldn't have changed anything yet ;-)

Where were the keys listed for your applications? It might be worth to query all those locations ;-)

Quote from: Dizzi on December 17, 2005, 08:29:19 PM
You shouldn't have changed anything yet ;-)

Where were the keys listed for your applications? It might be worth to query all those locations ;-)

These would all have been manual associations originally set with "Right Click -> Open With"  ZPad and PoserEd do not associate themselves by default with the common Poser file types.

I believe something happened with XP SP2 that changed the way "Open With" works.  You used to be able to force the presence of that item on the context menu for any file type by holding down the shift key as you right clicked, but Microsoft have now decided that you would never want to do that, so they appear to have disabled the facility.  There now has to be an entry in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for the extension before the "Open With" menu item will appear.

So, not sure what happened, maybe it got broken with one of Microsoft's interminable bug fixes (ooops, sorry, I meant security patches!) but this has also fixed the "Open With" menus that I hadn't even noticed were broken.

(ps It had never been my intention to suggest using Explorer's "Open With" facility, I was thinking of defining the file types just for use in Advanced Library)

Well, it's just easier to take the settings from the registry than to put in more settings ;-)

Quote from: Dizzi on December 17, 2005, 09:27:15 PM
Well, it's just easier to take the settings from the registry than to put in more settings ;-)

Yes, I agree. If they're already there.  I'm wondering how many people will already have associations set up for .hd2, .fcz, .mt5 files etc.  If they haven't, the only way they'll be able to get them in is via Explorer (and the trick I've just mentioned for XP), or from an app that sets them up when it installs or first runs.

Anyway, that's all working for me now. Thanks for adding that feature.

Works fine for me adding them with XP SR2... But i'll add an open with dialog

Quote from: Dizzi on December 17, 2005, 10:08:05 PM
Works fine for me adding them with XP SR2... But i'll add an open with dialog

Yes, on further experimentation, I see that the "Open With" option appears for a file type only after selecting "Open" from the context menu for the first time and then choosing a program.  I'm sure this is different (XP) behaviour to what happened before, but anyway I think the problem is solved.