A Utility to Unassociate File Types in Windows 7 and Vista

Here is a utility that helps you unassociate a file type quickly in your Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer without the need to edit the registry manually. Windows 7 & Vista do not provide a GUI option to unassociate file types, thus the need arises for such a tool below.

Related article:How to Remove a File Association Using the Registry Editor?

Unassociate file types in Windows 7 & Windows Vista

  • Download unassoc.zip and save to Desktop
  • Extract the contents to a folder and run the file unassoc.exe
  • Select the file type from the list
  • Click Remove file association (User)

The user-specific association for the chosen file type is now removed from the registry. The system will now use the global file association settings.

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More information

Command Description
Remove file association (User) Removes the user-specific association (via the Open With dialog) for the chosen file type. Note that this button will remain dimmed if there is no user-specific association for the file type.
Delete file type Deletes the file type completely from the registry. Both the user-specific and global associations for the chosen file type is removed.
Refresh list Refreshes the list box contents.

Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a ten-time recipient of the Microsoft MVP award in Windows Desktop Experience (Windows Shell), from 2003 to 2012. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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181 thoughts on “A Utility to Unassociate File Types in Windows 7 and Vista”

  2. Thank you very much. I accidentally associated .lnk files with WordPad, and I’m sure you know what kind of a clustercluck my Start menu became. I don’t know *why* the system asked me to associate .lnk files in the first place, but that’s a whole other bag of beans. This little utility really saved my bacon — thanks!

  5. I tried to use this utility on a win7 PC which has a problem opening the MS Security Essentials program (keeps opening the ‘Open With’ dialog) but there is no user asoociated file type for this so no further forward – but can see it is a useful link for many other extensions. Thanks for putting it up.

  10. Thank you so much for this. I was in a panic. Somehow all my icons got linked to Adobe Reader. The only way I was able to get a browser to open to find this was through the Reader. Don’t even ask me how I got there. This little program worked like a charm. Brought everything back to normal.
    Thanks again

    Mark

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