OH WHERE, OH WHERE HAVE MY PREVIEWS GONE? PART 1 OF 2

"I recently installed a photo publishing package, and it changed my file associations so that it was the default program for all graphics files. I didn't like this behavior, so I changed it back (by selecting View, Folder Options, clicking the File Types tab, and so on). The problem is now Windows doesn't display previews of those files in my open folders window (when viewing the folders as Web pages), like it used to. How can I get my previews back?"

The good news is you can get them back. The bad news is you'll need to do some Registry editing, and quite a bit of it. (Warning: As always, we recommend backing up your Registry files--System.dat and User.dat, hidden files on the root of your hard drive--before continuing.)

Open the Registry Editor--select Start, Run, type

regedit

and click OK--and navigate your way to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\, where is the type of file you want to preview, such as .gif. With that key selected, click the plus icon (+) in the left pane to expand all keys within it. In order for preview mode to work for that file type, the following entries need to be there:

Registry Key: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\\ShellEx]

Registry Key: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920- 11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]

Value: (Default)="{7376D660-C583-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}"

If any or all of these entries aren't there, you'll need to create them. We'll show you how in our next tip....

This page last updated: Monday, 24. May 1999 09:47:02 -0500