Vista Tutorial - Change the "Open With" submenu in Windows Explorer

I have a program that edits files, and it works perfectly. Except...

When the file is not on the C drive, for whatever reason, the program can't
save the file after I've edited it.

The good news is that I discovered that if I change the compatibility of the
program to Windows XP, then it does work and I can save the file.

And, when I open the program using the shortcut from the Start Menu, the
compatibility is noted and the program works.

So far so good.

But, when I open the program by selecting the file with the "Open With"
sub-menu in Windows Explorer, the compatibility setting is ignored and I
can't save the file after editing it.

How can I set the "Open With" sub-menu to use the new XP compatibility
setting?

Thank you

Hi,

Click start, type 'program compatibility' and click on the top entry that
appears in the menu. Run this wizard to set the program (select from a list)
to always run in the preferred mode.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Paddy" <Paddy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:26398473-49FD-4EA2-A15A-4860D306B12F@microsoft.com...
>I have a program that edits files, and it works perfectly. Except...
>
> When the file is not on the C drive, for whatever reason, the program
> can't
> save the file after I've edited it.
>
> The good news is that I discovered that if I change the compatibility of
> the
> program to Windows XP, then it does work and I can save the file.
>
> And, when I open the program using the shortcut from the Start Menu, the
> compatibility is noted and the program works.
>
> So far so good.
>
> But, when I open the program by selecting the file with the "Open With"
> sub-menu in Windows Explorer, the compatibility setting is ignored and I
> can't save the file after editing it.
>
> How can I set the "Open With" sub-menu to use the new XP compatibility
> setting?
>
> Thank you

"Rick Rogers" wrote:
> Click start, type 'program compatibility' and click on the top entry that
> appears in the menu.

I clicked Start, typed 'program compatibility' -- without the quotes -- and
nothing appeared. (I also cut-and-pasted your wording to ensure that my
spelling was right.)

I clicked "Search Everywhere" and still received zero results.

I looked around in the Control Panel, but I didn't know what I should be
looking for.

I tried the Help & Support system and entered 'program compatibility' into
the search bar, and voilÃ*, I found it!

**For future use, where would I normally find this file?

Unfortunately, the wizard already knew about the setting and my confirming
it has not changed the result. It still doesn't work when used from the
context menu in Windows Explorer (but does work when started from the Start
Menu).

Is there perhaps a way to *remove* this program from the context menu
(because it seems that the context menu has saved the old version of the
shortcut before I changed the compatibility settings), and then I can add it
again?

Thank you.

Hold on! I've just found the answer.

The context menu was a red herring.

The folder in question has the "Customize" Property set to "Documents". That
means that when I click once on a document in Windows Explorer, it shows a
preview of the document on the right-hand side of the screen.

It seems that whatever program is being used to display the preview has put
a write-lock on the file. This means that I can "open with" another program
to read the file, but not to write back the changes.

I have set the "Customize" Property of the folder to "All Items". This has
allowed me to edit the file successfully.

Thank you for your time, and I hope that this post helps someone else.