Interesting empty file behaviour in Windows Vista upgrades

Did you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista? Do you turn off Explorer's "Hide Known File Types" option?

If so, try this:

Right-click on your desktop, select "New" and then "Text File".

Name your text file "test.cmd". Approve the prompt that tells you changing the file type might cause your world to stop.

Now try and edit the test.cmd file - right-click it, select "Edit".

Jesper and I both get the following message:

At the moment, I just can't think of a good explanation - do you get the same behaviour?

We've already discovered that it doesn't seem to happen if you had a fresh install of Windows Vista, only if you upgraded to Windows Vista from Windows XP.

Published Tue, Jun 5 2007 4:04 by Alun Jones
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Comments

# re: Interesting empty file behaviour in Windows Vista upgrades

Perhaps the XP->Vista upgrade messed up the .cmd shell extension in the registry?

Friday, June 08, 2007 11:35 AM by Mario Contestabile

# re: Interesting empty file behaviour in Windows Vista upgrades

That's what I thought to begin with, but here's the setting:

C:\>reg query hkcr\cmdfile\shell\edit\command

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\cmdfile\shell\edit\command

   (Default)    REG_EXPAND_SZ    "%SystemRoot%\System32\NOTEPAD.EXE" "%1"

As far as I can tell, that's exactly the same as on a Vista clean install.

Friday, June 08, 2007 4:18 PM by Alun Jones

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