Another possible Wally is using cleaners. Here are what I use. You may need to print this. I use all these cleaners for W2K/XP, each one specialises in a different area. Do not be supprised if hundreds of files are found. Files are either removed to the programs backup or the Recycle Bin ( make sure the Recycle Bin is empty, before using the cleaners, that way you know the files you have removed ) All ( except DustBuster ) allow you to restore them back into the system, either by right clicking on the reg file in the programs folder ( example Regclean & OleClean > Windows Explorer > Unzipped, click on either RegClean or OleClean ) & clicking on Merge. jv16 PowerTools, RegCleaner & RegSeeker both store in Backup on their main page. Opening Backup allows you to either Restore or Delete. EasyCleaner removes to the Recycle Bin & by opening the Recycle Bin, right clicking on the files & clicking Restore. Has an Update button. Checks you have the latest version & blacklist. CCleaner, one advantage of this cleaner is, when Issues is clicked & the boxes ticked, it will tell you before you fix ( doing one file at a time ) why the file is there. Configure the Windows, Applications & Issues panels to suit. RegScrub Click on Restore, click the backup to be restored, click on Restore Selected backups. DustBuster Very quick, if you want to know what it cleaned, takes about 1 min to clean ( depends on the speed of your comp ) you have about 4 seconds to read the message displayed, when it is finished. Don't use whilst online. Find Junk Files I use only > Find Dead Links, which is part of Find Junk Files. Start > Programs. Backups Once you are sure they are not needed again ( about one week ) they can be deleted. ============================= jv16 PowerTools 1.3.0.195, which doesn't expire. http://spazioinwind.libero.it/puntocr/dwl/jv16pt_setup.exe http://down.hengshui.com/download.asp?downid=1&id=726 http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page7.html http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html#jv16 http://www.pricelessware.org/thelist/sys.htm Click on Registry tool > Tools > Registry Cleaner > Continue > Start. When finished, Click on Select > Special select > Items that should be safe to remove > Remove. Or, the renamed later version ( dos'nt hurt to use both ) RegCleaner http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/ http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/dload/RegCleaner.zip RegCleaner 4.3.0.780 ( last freeware version ) OS: Win9x/NT/ME/2000/XP Click on Tools > Registry Cleanup > Do them All When finished, click on Select > All, then down the bottom, click on > Remove Selected. ================================== RegClean http://www.majorgeeks.com/download458.html http://www.download.com/3000-2094-881470.html http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,4666,00.asp Microsoft's RegClean ( freeware ) very conservative. By default it puts the 3 files into Windows Temp. I prefer them in Unzipped. Right click in an empty space in Unzipped, select Folder & name it RegClean. Now when you click unzip ( during install ) select the new folder. To use, you can either open up the folder & doubleclick on RegClean or right click & make a shortcut to your desktop & then put it anywhere you like. =========================== OleClean ( Freeware. I tick all 8 boxes in Options ) http://www.majorgeeks.com/OleClean_d452.html http://www.geocities.com/maurizioferreira/oleclean.html http://www.webgrid.co.uk/system_13.html http://www.webgrid.co.uk/index.html http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oleclean =============================== CCleaner http://www.ccleaner.com/ CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimisation tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing it to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free. :) Windows 95/98/NT4/ME/2000/XP/2003 Myth - "Deleting the contents of the Prefetch directory in Windows XP will speed up the boot process" http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html Warning - Recently CCleaner has added a performance slowing cleaning option, cleaning "Old Prefetch Data". ================================= RegSeeker http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm RegSeeker is a perfect companion for your Windows regsitry! RegSeeker includes a powerful registry cleaner and can display various informations like your startup entries, several histories (even index.dat files), installed applications and much more! With RegSeeker you can search for any item inside your registry, export/delete the results, open them in the registry. RegSeeker also includes a tweaks panel to optimize your OS! RegSeeker is FREE for personal use only! Click on Clean the Registry & tick ( new version 1.45 has this already ticked > Scan Drives for old exe entries in the registry. Click OK. My personal use, is to, delete only the Green entries. Click on Select All and choose > Select all Green items. Right click to delete. ========================================= EasyCleaner http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm Click on Unnecessary. I tick > Normal types, Extra types & Temp directories. Don't use Duplicate files unless you really know what your doing. If you try & remove a file that is being used, it will after about a 15 second delay, inform you so & will not delete. ================================== RegScrubXP http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2048 http://www.sofotex.com/RegScrubXP-download_L7528.html Registry Cleaner for Windows XP/2000 Systems (under development is a version that will run in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP) I have made it very easy for you to backup the registry prior to using RegScrubXP. This backup process uses Microsoft's reg.exe program. Follow these directions: Go into the folder where RegScrubXP was installed. Double-click on these two programs: HKLM.cmd and HKCU.cmd You should see two files created: HKLM.reg and HKCU.reg Copy these two files to a safe place. If you ever need to fully restore your registry back to normal, double-click on HKLM.reg and HKCU.reg to fully restore your registry as it was before you used RegScrubXP. ================================== DustBuster http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=11&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=10&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=12&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=9&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=13&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=1182&file=14&evp=bfd7730c44fba586eaed019edd92d63c DustBuster is a garbage file removing utility for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It searches for junk files and temp files that are of no use and are just taking space on your hard drive. Based on a "common sense" scanning technology, DustBuster now cleans over 1500 different types of useless temp files and directories in a single click, detecting and deleting all these unneeded files automatically. This will increase hard disk space on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003. ================================== Find Junk Files http://www.majorgeeks.com/Find_Junk_Files_d1953.html Find Junk Files is a user-friendly utility designed to free up disk space by deleting useless junk files. Each time you use your PC, unwanted files are created that increasingly use more space on your hard drive. Find Junk Files can find more than 165 types of junk files with ease. Unlike many other programs Find Junk Files will let you choose which drive or drives to clean, which file types to search for, and what folders to include or exclude. ================================== Binman http://steveseymour.0catch.com/ http://anothermirror.tripod.com/free.htm Seeks out the rubbish left behind by other programs. Use regularly it will save space. It can auto run at times set by you. Cleans automatically at boot up. Or, ( dos'nt hurt to use both ) XP Auto Delete Temporary Folder http://www.tweakxp.com/display.aspx?id=2021 First go into gpedit.msc ( only available in the Pro version of XP ) Start > Run, type in > gpedit.msc & press Enter. Next select -> Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Terminal Services/Temporary Folder Then right click "Do Not Delete Temp Folder Upon Exit" Go to properties and hit disable. Now next time Windows puts a temp file in that folder it will automatically delete it when its done!

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Just thinking aloud, if the program is still there then I doubt any registry cleaners will query it (they tend to go for situations where a file is missing). I use some of these on W98SE but my old versions have problems, which may or may not have been sorted in newer versions. One of these problems is that the undo .reg file entries are saved in the order found, which is incorrect. This means that when restored it puts back the earliest found entries first which can get things wrong. Let's say it first removes a Value, then subsequently removes a key (folder), which is the usual order of events. The undo will try to put the value back but will not be able to because there is no key. Next it will put the Key back, so the Value is lost. RegSeeker is one of the few that gets it right (saves in reverse order) but unfortunately this program has most definitely removed valid information on my machine and wrecked two programs. This was proven (repeatable). It also reports common extensions as invalid even though files with these extensions exist. EasyCleaner saves in the wrong order but this doesn't matter because it only removes Values. jv16 saves in the wrong order and also removes keys. As described earlier, it can lose keys when you apply the undo (proven). There's no easy way to determine the save order of MS RegClean but as it only removes Values it shouldn't matter. Of these four I therefore don't trust RegSeeker in as much as it removes valid entries, and with jv16 you can't trust the undo. EasyCleaner & MS RegClean seem OK. You can of-course trust the "Registry Tool" page of jv16 because you just manually remove redundant programs by Author or Program. If anyone cares to check out the save order on any new versions of the cleaners mentioned that remove Keys then I would be interested to know if there has been any improvement. I tested them one at a time by renaming webcheck.dll but I've no idea if XP uses this file. If you consecutively run a series of registry cleaners that find dud entries you should always note the order in which they were run (undo file time will do) so that the undos can be applied "last first", for the reasons already given. One thing most registry cleaners can screw up is when they see a file in the registry with a tag, such as "setup.exe/0". Although setup.exe is present they are liable to remove the entry because there is no matching file called "setup.exe/0" (not surprising). I appreciate that many folk say they run registry cleaners without any problems. However when you system goes wonky it is not always clear what caused it. One possiblity is a registry cleaner but by then, even if it is suspected, it's probably difficult to find the undo in the heap - even assuming it does the undo operation correctly. I've had odd registry entries vanish which I've managed to sort out. I've no idea why they went but registry cleaners are quite a possibility. You have to keep your eye on them. As far as this post is concerned I think the safest thing to try first is my #6 if you have a copy of the offending program available. DerekW

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I finally got rid of the unwanted entry. Uninstalling the program indeed got rid of the entry. After a reboot everything still looked good. Then I reinstalled the program and guess what, it poped right back into the "open with" dialog. : ( So then I deleted the entire file type (.JPG) from the list of file types within Windows explorer. I again rebooted and verified that the bad program was not showing within "open with". Then I readded the JPG file type. Without adding any programs to "open with" they all came back - including the unwanted one. : ( This is the type of thing I hate about MS in general & Windows in particular. You can't do what you want, regardless of what you try. So I went back into reg edit and again searched for the unwanted program. This time I found it & deleted it. The problem with my last search through the registry was I was seaching for the "title" of the program (what showed up in "open with"). This time I searched for the executable (.EXE) file name. Once found, it was a cinch to delete. Now I'm happy. : ) Thank you all for your help & ideas! Wally

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Great, thx for popping back to let us know. DerekW

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Good news Wally, thought it would be a registry entry. Thanks, for letting us know.

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This will fully solve your problem by removing the particular Open With item from the registry, should you still be interested: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/OpenWith.htm

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