Fixing File Associations and Icons in Windows Explorer

[Guest Molly]

The RW16 installation program sets up file associations and file icons for: Rw2D, Rw3D, RwDat and RwRpt file extensions - so you can double-click on one of these file types in Windows Explorer, and Windows will know what program to use to open it. However it is possible for these settings to change even though the correct registry settings haven't been touched.

To fix the file type - program associations is pretty straight forward: go to the Control Panel/Default Programs/Set Associations. Select the file extension and click change program.

However this won't fix the file icons. For this you need to do some Registry Surgery. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts and find the File Extension key you want to fix (such as .Rw2D) and delete it. When you reboot your computer the correct file icon will be restored.

The file associations allow you to select and open multiple files from Windows Explorer using only 1 instance of RockWorks16. Of course doing multiple RwDat files doesn't do much since there's only 1 viewer.

(Thanks, Mitch, for the handy tips.)

Molly Mayfield

RockWare Inc.