File Association Fixes for Windows 8

Some file association settings got mangled in your system? This page contains the default file association settings (.reg files) for some common file types. These fixes are applicable for Windows® 8 systems only.

AVI BAT BMP COM
EXE GIF HTM/HTML ICO
JPE/JPEG/JPG JS LNK MP3
MPE/MPEG/MPG MSC PNG REG
SCR TIF/TIFF TXT VBS
WMA WMV XML ZIP
Directory Drive Folder

Instructions

To fix the association for a particular file type:

  1. Download the corresponding fix from the above table. (Use Right-click – Save Target as in your browser to download.)
  2. Unzip the file and extract the .reg file to Desktop.
  3. Right-click the REG file and choose Merge. Alternately, start the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and use the Import option from the File menu to apply the REG file.

Note: REG files have plain-text content, can be viewable using a text editor like Notepad, just in case you want to see the contents before applying.

You need to be an administrator to apply these fixes.

For Windows 7 and Windows Vista, see File Association Fixes for Windows Vista and Windows 7.


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

6 thoughts on “File Association Fixes for Windows 8”

  1. Hi. Does “Windows 8” here strictly mean “Windows 8.0”? Or does it also apply to “Windows 8.1”?

  2. I spent a few hours last night trying to unassociate a “.la” file I had
    assigned to notepad, under windows 8.1; all I found were stupid explanations
    of the obvious default task. Why can’t the same simple fix
    unassoc for win7, Vista be applied in windows 8? What is there to do to
    get the “open with” option back for a given filetype?

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