I have a suggestion about Prevent Programs From Changing Your File Types:

Keys in the Windows 2000 registry have permission settings not a lot unlike NTFS. So simply change the permission settings for your extensions from "Full Control" to "Read".

1) Setup the extension as you see fit. (open with application, shell menu, etc.)

2) In order to access security settings, you'll have to edit the registry using REGEDT32 instead of the usual REGEDIT. So go to Start/Run and enter REGEDT32 or find it in your \WINNT\System32 directory.

3) Instead of one big tree view of the registry, REGEDT32 will have five smaller trees, one for each top level key. In the proper window, select the extension you want to protect. (\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp3 for example)

4) From the security menu, choose permissions. The "Read" and "Full Control" boxes will be greyed out because this key inherites its permissions from its parent key. Uncheck the "Allow inheritable permissions from parent to propagate this object" box.

5) A dialog is displayed with the option to copy the inherited permissions or remove all permissions. Click "Remove."

6) Now, no one has access to the key. So click the "Add" button.

7) In the users and groups dialog, select "Everyone." Click "Add" then click "Ok."

8) Finally give "Everyone" read permission and click "Ok."

I left mine at that and it hasn't given me any trouble. Although I did notice that "SYSTEM" had full control. So you might want to consider repeating steps 6-8 to allow the system full control. Also, this key doesn't actually contain the command to launch appliations. It's just a pointer to that key. I've found that most apps like to change this pointer to their own set of commands instead of actually editing the commands. But if this isn't the case for your appliation. You may need to repeat this process for another key.

Chad P

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

• Search this forum
• Start a new thread on a different subject

• Report abuse of the forum