Well I did it. I fat fingered opening a log file and forget to clear the "Always use selected program..." box. Does anyone know the clean and correct way to reverse this? I have tried looking for the offending reg entry I haven't seen a way to restore all of the default file associations. Of course you can't select it back to nothing, the way it was before. I know it should appear to be associated with "Unknown application" in the list after comparing it to a coworker's server. Applications open notepad and also have the notepad icon.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950505

In control Panel go to: Default Programs | Set Associations and you can set it on per association basisWith kind regards Krystian Zieja http://www.projectnenvision.com Follow me on twitter My Blog

or from the command line use ftpe and assoc you probably just need assoc .exe=exefile the settings should be: D:\>assoc .exe .exe=exefile D:\>ftype exefile exefile="%1" %*

I will try that SJB, thank you. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe appears to be GONE. Again this was all accomplished by simply forgetting to clear one check mark.. Fortunately this is only a test server, but it is a test server that I need. That is also localized to the Administrator account, I created a new user account and it is free of the problem. Any help is appreciated!

Solved. After deleting this entry all of my files went back to associating with exe Applications, Icons were back to normal, and programs open normally AND "Open with..." is still in the context menu and functioning normally. Drill down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.lnk\User Choice DELETE the User Choice folder. (export it if it makes you feel better) Reboot, get on with life. Thank you again for the responses. I meant to mention that I am working in Server 2008 R2.

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