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Topic: Foobar2000 and File Associations (Read 1292 times) previous topic - next topic
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Foobar2000 and File Associations

Recently I've had an odd issue. When I open a FLAC/MP3/other audio file from a Windows Explorer window, it opens normally in foobar2000 (as it should - it's set as my default audio player). However, if I search for a FLAC/MP3/other audio file using the search box in the Windows taskbar - and then open the file directly from there - it opens the file in MediaInfo instead.

At first I thought this was a MediaInfo issue. However, when I switch my default audio player to other software (e.g. mpv), files open correctly in that software regardless of where I open them from.

After taking a hunt around in Nirsoft's excellent FileTypesMan software, it seems that MediaInfo has registered itself under .flac (and all the other audio files I was having problems with);



However, it seems that all the items related to foobar2000 - including the standard "open" command which is marked as the default - are disabled. When I enable these manually in FileTypesMan, everything works as expected. However 1) I don't want to have to do this manually for every single file foobar2000 supports 2) every time I re-run foobar2000 after manually altering these entries, it summons the "foobar2000 Shell Associations Updater" and... disables itself again.

Can anybody tell me how I can first of all make foobar2000 the default player for all the audio files it supports, and second of all prevent itself from trying to shoot itself in the foot by disabling itself again? Thanks 8)

Re: Foobar2000 and File Associations

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Case on
It's a messy situation: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=110370.0.
Thanks for the response. I'm not surprised to discover that there's a Windows issue behind this - it feels like every time I have a superficial problem with Windows there's some bizarre aspect of OS history that underlies it.

Do you have any suggestions for how I should handle this in practice? Or rather, if I go into FileTypesMan and manually enable all of foobar2000's actions (and then tell foobar2000 not to change them back with the Shell Extension Updater), then I do get the behaviour I want (files open correctly in foobar2000 from search, files also open directly in foobar2000 from Explorer and can be enqueued with the right-click shortcut). Can you explain to me what the downside of this latter approach is (aside from the time it would take to do it manually)?

Thanks for your patience and assistance, I really do appreciate it.

Re: Foobar2000 and File Associations

Reply #3 –
I don't have good suggestions for you. There are downsides to everything. We tried changing the registration to allow the legacy commands to co-exist with the shell extension - that is exactly what enabling in FileTypesMan does. The thread I linked lists some known problems with that method (post 5).

I have long hoped that Peter would take a look if the Shell extension could be improved. But I suppose that is a low priority. Though the benefit of the current shell extension is that it's unintrusive. It gets only loaded when it's needed, unlike most other extensions that are constantly in Explorer's process.