Export and Import Default App Associations for New Users in Windows  

questorfla said:

Help!
I was able to solve most of the problems using a VBS script
The original wasn't my work. It was made for Chrome but I modified it to add Acrobat
The last problem is Outlook. Due to naming conventions outlook%202016 will not work
but it has to represent "outlook 2016" in the script in order to work properly
Any ideas on how to fix this? I am sure it is easy and i will find it eventually but....
here is the part that works. I would think that this can be added to for as many programs as needed is done properly
enter copied code for each program after the line
WshShell.SendKeys " "
I am sure you can see where it repeats for adobe.
By the way, Adobe MUST come after Chrome in order for things to work right.
Many Thanks to the original posted on Super User :
https://superuser.com/questions/1069...ser-windows-10

Code:

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "%windir%\system32\control.exe /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageDefaultProgram\pageAdvancedSettings?
pszAppName=google%20chrome"
WScript.Sleep 1200
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys " "
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys " "
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "%windir%\system32\control.exe /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageDefaultProgram\pageAdvancedSettings?
pszAppName=adobe%20acrobat%20reader%20dc"
WScript.Sleep 1200
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys " "
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys "{TAB}"
WshShell.SendKeys " "
WScript.Quit

I just went down this exact path
The appRegName is specified in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (orHKEY_CURRENT_USER)\SOFTWARE\RegisteredApplications

Outlook 2016 is registered as outlook.application.2016 (I initially thought the %202016 was causing issues.. but percent-encoding only accepts 2 characters as input.. so the app name had to be incorrect.)

The command you want to add for outlook 2016 will be WshShell.Run "%windir%\system32\control.exe /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageDefaultProgram\pageAdvancedSettings?pszAppName=outlook.application.16"

jgt1942 said:

How do you restore the defaults for an existing user?

^
Restoring defaults is very useful, because the XML file(s) list all sorts of different settings, such as:

Code:

  <Association Identifier=".htm" ProgId="FirefoxHTML" ApplicationName="Firefox" />
  <Association Identifier=".html" ProgId="FirefoxHTML" ApplicationName="Firefox" />

Code:

  <Association Identifier="http" ProgId="FirefoxURL-308046B0AF4A39CB" ApplicationName="Firefox" />
   <Association Identifier="https" ProgId="FirefoxURL-308046B0AF4A39CB" ApplicationName="Firefox" />

&
For a novice, it can be difficult to understand why ProgId is labeled different, in all sorts of ways, heh. :-/

P.S. Btw., Windows Environment Variables (for some, strange, reason!) are an elusive bunch. After much searching, I was finally able to come up with a couple of URLs @

Code:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable

Code:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usmt-recognized-environment-variables

doesn't work on win 10

Code:

Error:  DISM   DISM Assoc Provider: PID=8456 TID=236 Failed to export the user associations from the registry. - CAssocManager::ExportAppAssoc(hr:0x80004002)
Error:  DISM   DISM Assoc Provider: PID=8456 TID=236 Failed to export the user associations. - CAssocManager::ProcessCmdLine_ExportAppAssoc(hr:0x80004002)
 Error:  DISM   DISM Assoc Provider: PID=8456 TID=236 Failed while processing command export-defaultappassociations. - CAssocManager::ExecuteCmdLine(hr:0x80004002)

Sorry, I'm not quite sure I understand how this works. Suppose that my Windows 10 computer only has one user account (a local one created when first installing Windows).

Given the above, is it possible to use the method here to change default applications based for myself (the current - and only - user)? You mention that it "this only gets applied to "new" user accounts," so I would assume no. If that's the case, do you know of ANY automated way to set default file associations for the current and only user on Windows 10?

It seems to me like it's stored in the registry; for example, when I used RegistryChagesView to see what changed after setting the default application for images from Windows Photo Viewer to Paint, I got this:



However, when I try to use a .reg file to import over those entries, I receive the following error:



I still get the error even after restarting the computer and trying again. Further, I suspect (but haven't yet tested) that the hash value isn't always identical (I guess it's calculated whenever you set the default application?), and I'm not sure what it represents or if it's important.

Basically, I just need some automated way to set the default applications for the current user, but I keep running into problems. Is there any way to do this?

Edit:
Now that I think about it, there HAS to be an automated way to do this. When you install some programs, they will automatically associate certain extensions with themselves (such as when you install Python; .py files are automatically set to run with Python.exe). So there's got to be a way that I can do it too, right?

This worked beautifully, thank you very much! Seems to be quite the interesting "security" measure taken by Microsoft.

After setting associations, would changing the SYSTEM permissions to the UserChoice registry sub key to read only lock that value in?

Hi All,

First - thanks for the tutorial!

Quick question that I hope someone can help me with.

We are currently using Windows 10 Ent 1909. Following the steps in the tutorial I assigned the default apps, exported and imported the config via DISM. Created a new user and logged in for the first time to test if the associations were applied correctly (tested with PDF files). They did - everything looks correctly according to the Settings tab as shown below:



That is all good, however when I open a PDF file for the first time I'm getting the dialog below, asking to If I want to ''Keep using this app" and a checkbox to "Always use this app to open .pdf files".



Is there a way to bypass this message entirely and set pdf files to open in Reader without any messages upon first run for new users?

Thank you