Change open file with… regedit

Question

I have a user, which couldn’t get along with AutoCAD so he switched back to InterCAD. He’s not too computer literate so now when he tries’s to open a DWG file (AutoCAD native file extension) by double clicking it he’s register settings look for the AutoCAD program to open it.

I know that we can tweak the register settings for a .dwg file to open the file automatically with InterCAD rather then AutoCAD.

I’m not too un-familiar with tweaking the registry keys and when I do I like to automate this using batch script.

What is the best procedure to do this, I'm namely worried I will miss a key or is the following the only key I need to tweak

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.dwg\OpenWithprogids

The extension to execute Intercad in Intercad.exe

How do I successfully achieve my desired result?

Answer 1

The key you need to edit will be this one:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dwgfile\shell\open\command

That controls the program the file opens with.

To do this in a batch file use this:

reg add HKCR\dwgfile\shell\open\command /v "" /d "programpath.exe" /f

Hope this helps.