Unable to associate a file type with a program for one user

[DimSpark]

There are two users on my laptop. One user (with admin rights) is able to associate a file type with a program. Theother user (no admin rights) cannot. The non-admin browser can browse to a program and select it but on returning to the screen, the program does not appear. Here are some screen shots:

Selected file type and change program. Please note that the "always use" box is greyed out.

I can borowse to Audacity.exe and select it:

But having selected it, it does not appear on the next screen:

I have run malwarebytes and had some additional help yesterday with another problem which shold have removed any malware. Hence I have posted in this forum

[DimSpark]

Screen shots have not appeared so now attaching a pdf file with them.

FileAssocProb.pdf

[David H. Lipman]

I love Audacity. It is a great OpenSource project application for the modification, manipulation and conversion of Audio files. However it is classed for manipulation and conversion of Audio files not as a Audio File Player such as VideoLAN VLC Player.

Therefore it is not really a file associated application. That is it is not the type of application that is used as the default application when a supported file type is selected. Which may be considered a "push function" as when you Double-Click on an Audio File you push that file to "play" in that application. Audacity is more a "pull application". That is instead of forcing a given default application to load a file by Double-Clicking on the file, you load the application and have that application load the data file. The intended application "pulls" the file. This is indicative by the fact that there is no "associate" function under the "Edit --> Preferences" pull-down menu.

It is possible that under an account with administrative rights one may be able to unnaturally "force" an application to associate a file type to Audacity but because it is not designed with file associations in mind, you can't force it under a Limited User Account (LUA).

BTW: Beside the GUI based facility, there is also the ASSOCIATE command. Sample command line below...

associate .mp3 "C:\Program Files\Audacity\audacity.exe" /f

I did that under an administrative account and the result was...

Association ".mp3,C:\Program Files\Audacity\audacity.exe" added

However it did not change the icon of an MP3 file to that of Audacity's icon and Double-Clicking on a .MP3 file launched VLC (registered as default player) not Audacity nor did it add Audacity to the "Open With" Right-Click context sensitive menu. That reinforces to me that Audacity is just not designed as a "push application" by using file association.

[DimSpark]

Thank you for your reply. I agree that Audacity is a great program.

I tried the associate command and was struggling so googled it and that got me to this Microsoft page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2159999

This has solved the problem for both Audacity and Adobe reader.

Your answer pointed me in the right direction - thank you.

[David H. Lipman]