Vista - associations

hi all
im totally new to the vista forum only got it a few days ago and being a tweaker by nature i tweaked a few things everything seemed to be ok then i updated my graphics drivers all still ok but when i tried to play any game windows or otherwise i got an error message saying that the file had no program associated with it and to change it in the file association control panel (which i couldnt find) so i used system restore to rectify problem so my question is was it my tinkering that caused the problem or could it have been the drivers (which i somewhat doubt and hope it wasnt the cause as i have to update at some stage) hope someone can help
brian

Hi, xera2112, and welcome to the forums.

First off, drivers *should not* be changing file associations.

Second off, there is very little 'tweaking' that you need to do to Vista - it is rather efficient as it is. I would bet on the tweaks being the problem here.

thank you for the response i was pretty sure it wasnt the drivers just needed confirmation i guess i will have to abate the tweaking "if its not broke........"
brian

File association is a way for Windows to tell itself what to use to open files. For example, it 'knows' to open .txt files with Notepad and .doc files with Word. For every file type there is a corresponding program that Windows associates with it.

If you have a blank icon, then that means Windows has not associated that file type with any particular program. In order to fix that, you right click on the blank icon and select, "open with" and choose a program; this associates a particular file type with a particular program that Windows will/can from then on out use to open/run that program.

However, fixing .exe association is a little more tedius, and something you may not want to tinker with since system restore also works; however, fyi, here's a way to do it manually, scroll to the bottom for Vista: Broken EXE Association

Btw, what tweaks did you do that messed you up?

hi and thanks for the info may come in usefull the problem i later found out was i disabled some of the more useless services that were running and i think i inadvertantly disabled an important nvidia service which caused the problem
thanks again for the help

Have you gone through Black Viper's page? Lots of information here about what each setting does for you, from auto through disable: Windows Vista SP1 Service Configurations by Black Viper

DUUUUUDE, You NEEEEEEEEED to learn how to write. You have not one . period in there. Wow, how ugly.

Thank you fumz that was just what i was looking for

and here are lots of periods for buggs1a .................................................. feel free to insert them in my original message

No problem.

A word of caution though: don't get too crazy with disabling services; you never know when in the future you're going to need them? If Viper says it's OK to disable a service, you may want to instead set it to manual. Stay away from the bare-bones settings.