right click context menu problem

I recently started using WinXP Pro and everything was fine until last night. Now, when I double click on an folder I am automatically sent to "Search" instead of "Open ". I right-clicked in some of the folders and saw that "Search" was now the default choice instead of "Open" which was farther down in the menu list. How do I change this back to the way it was?

I also noted that a shortcut to the control panel I put on the desktop had Paint Shop Pro as the first default choice on the right click context menu. It wasn't that way when I originally did it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Download and run (double-click) this fix:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/xp_folder_open.vbs

You can read it first in Notepad if that makes you more comfortable. It is safe and you may need to ignore warnings from your antivirus. AV's have a probably justified prejudice against VBscripts .

If PaintShop shows in all your shortcuts' context menus, you may need to go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.lnk in the registry and delete any Open With entry.

Here is a list of default XP file associations. You can modify these in Folder Options, File Types.
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_easy_file.htm

 

Thank you very much for the work you did writing this program to correct the problem I had. It worked with no problem although Norton AV complained a couple of times about the read and write to the registry (just like you said it would). Although I have been programming since 1978, I'm just a babe in the woods on these problems. I still don't know why it happened in the first place! I had been using the new AdAware 6.0 and had heard it had some problems. Once again I really appreciate the extra time you spent on this. Thank you.

 

As much as I would like to take credit, it was not my program. Doug Knox busies himself combining fixes found at the Microsoft Knowledge Base and from other sources and writing these scripts that are helpful, and much quicker than manual solutions, for all. And at no charge, too.

His specialty seems to be VBscript. He uses what he knows well to accomplish otherwise tedious tasks. It just goes to show that neither VBscript nor the kiddies (that eventually grow up) that use it, are inherently evil .