(soft) file associations lost

[Gale Andrews]

I am sure the others here are using your (the correct) technique, but are both your Audacity executables for 1.3.14 and 2.0 named the same?

Yes, they are. Both installs are totally "vanilla", taking all the default values as set by the installer software.

I suspect the difference is that all of us who are having the problem had 1.3.14 installed *and uninstalled it, per the instructions for upgrading, before installing 2.0.* That's certainly the case for me.

I don't think installing 1.3.14, setting "open with" for a format, installing 2.0 then trying to change the association from 1.3.14 to 2.0 would work - the association would stay with 1.3.14. That is certainly the case on Windows XP. The only way I know to get two instances of Audacity in "Open with" is to rename one of the executables.


Gale

[PGA]

I don't think installing 1.3.14, setting "open with" for a format, installing 2.0 then trying to change the association from 1.3.14 to 2.0 would work - the association would stay with 1.3.14. That is certainly the case on Windows XP. The only way I know to get two instances of Audacity in "Open with" is to rename one of the executables.

@Gale,
That wasn't what I did. I installed v1.3.14. It installed into "C:Program Files (x86)Audacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)". It did the file association itself and correctly. I then installed v2.0 when it became available. It installed into "C:Program Files (x86)Audacity".It also has done the file association automatically and correctly - which I admit surprised me! The v2.0 file association has over-written the previous file association from v1.3.14. I can now, if I choose to do so, swap the file association to and fro using the "Open With..." technique. All this has taken place on a Win 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit system.

[Gale Andrews]

I don't think installing 1.3.14, setting "open with" for a format, installing 2.0 then trying to change the association from 1.3.14 to 2.0 would work - the association would stay with 1.3.14. That is certainly the case on Windows XP. The only way I know to get two instances of Audacity in "Open with" is to rename one of the executables.

@Gale,
That wasn't what I did. I installed v1.3.14. It installed into "C:Program Files (x86)Audacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)". It did the file association itself and correctly. I then installed v2.0 when it became available. It installed into "C:Program Files (x86)Audacity".It also has done the file association automatically and correctly - which I admit surprised me! The v2.0 file association has over-written the previous file association from v1.3.14. I can now, if I choose to do so, swap the file association to and fro using the "Open With..." technique. All this has taken place on a Win 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit system.

Audacity does not "do any file associations itself" except for .aup. Your image shows .aup:



Everyone else here is talking about audio files like MP3, WAV...

Choose an audio file for which you don't have an association with Audacity. Right-click > Open with, browse to either the 1.3.14 or 2.0.0 audacity.exe. Can you set the association to that audacity.exe?


Gale

[PGA]

Everyone else here is talking about audio files like MP3, WAV...

Choose an audio file for which you don't have an association with Audacity. Right-click > Open with, browse to either the 1.3.14 or 2.0.0 audacity.exe. Can you set the association to that audacity.exe?

Ooops! Sorry to have misunderstood the question.

I can use "Open With..." to set file associations for WAV and MP3 to Audacity 1.3.14 - but not to Audacity 2.0. I then renamed the Audacity EXE file for 1.3.14 to audacity1314.exe, to avoid the conflict of name with the exe for v2.0, and then tried to set file associations for WAV and MP3 to audacity.exe in C:Program Files (x86)Audacity. This failed because Audacity did not appear in the Recommended Programs panel after Browse-ing to it. I then uninstalled Audacity 2.0 and re-installed it to a folder called C:Program Files (x86)Audacity-2-0, thinking that perhaps there were some old registry entries associated with C:Program File (x86)Audacity that were interfering. I was still unable to get Audacity 2.0 to appear in the Recommended Programs panel when doing a file association. In all the above I did NOT re-boot the PC. Should I have done so?

So, to summarize:
I can set file associations for WAV and MP3 files to Audacity v1.3.14 but cannot get Audacity 2.0 to even appear in the list of Recommended Programs. What is different about the way these two versions are installed? Why does a standard Windows process work for one but not for the other?

I've joined everybody else; I'm now complaining about this, too!

[Gale Andrews]

I can set file associations for WAV and MP3 files to Audacity v1.3.14 but cannot get Audacity 2.0 to even appear in the list of Recommended Programs. What is different about the way these two versions are installed? Why does a standard Windows process work for one but not for the other?

There is no need to reboot the computer in any of this. Possibly running CCleaner would help, then start from where that leaves you.

There is no relevant difference in the way 1.3.14 and 2.0.0 are installed. The Audacity version that has the Open with association set first (irrespective whether Audacity is installed or not) will take the association. If you want to associate a file type with a second version of Audacity as well, rename that second version.

Audacity will not appear in the list of "Recommended Programs" for audio file formats unless the installer specifically installs registry keys to do so; however it is the identical names of the application that prevent you associating different versions of Audacity with the same extension.


Gale

[PGA]

... however it is the identical names of the application that prevent you associating different versions of Audacity with the same extension...

Why? I have two versions of PicturesToExe software and both versions appear in "Recommended Programs". The executable file for this program is the same in both versions. I made no changes to this name during or after the install. Windows 7 happily offers me both v6.5 and v7.0 of PicturesToExe when I do "Open With...". If Wnsoft (the writers of PicturesToExe) can get it to work, why can't the Audacity developers. It clearly isn't rocket science!

[steve]

We need to make a distinction between file associations with "Audacity Projects" and file associations with "audio files".

This is how it works on XP:

When Audacity 1.3.x is installed, Windows creates a registry key to identify the Audacity Project (Audacity.Project) and the Audacity Project file extension (.AUP).

.AUP is defined as an Audacity Project (Audacity.Project).
Audacity.Project is given an "OpenWithList" containing "audacity.exe" and has a "shell > open" association with the fully defined path to audacity.exe
Audacity is now the default program for opening .AUP files.

When Audacity is used to open a project by double clicking on the AUP file, Windows registers a key for audacity.exe in the "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTApplications" section.
The Application entry for audacity.exe contains a "shell > open" entry to the fully defined path to audacity.exe and Audacity will now appear in the list of "Other Programs" that can be associated with audio files.

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When Audacity 2.0 is installed, if Audacity 1.3.x has not been uninstalled
The Audacity.Project entry is NOT updated to the new version of Audacity (so Audacity Projects will still open with the 1.3.x version). This allows users to "try out" Audacity 2.0 without altering their previous installation.

The "audacity.exe > shell > open" association also still points to Audacity 1.3.x so Audacity 2.0 does not appear in the list of "Recommended Programs" or "Other Programs".

Selecting Audacity 2.0 as the program to open a .AUP file with does not work because the registry associates ".aup" files with "Audacity.Projects" and "Audacity.Projects" "audacity.exe" which is still recorded in the registry as the old version. When you browse to the new version and select it, the registry "sees" the program name "audacity.exe" which is already registered, so sees no need to update.

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If Audacity 1.3.8 is then uninstalled, the .AUP and Audacity-Project keys are removed, so .AUP files have no file association.
The "audacity.exe" key that Windows created still remains set to Audacity 1.3.x

Re-installing Audacity 2.0 will create new file associations for .AUP and Audacity.Projects.
The Audacity.Project > shell > open entry now points to Audacity 2.0, so Audacity 2.0 is now the default program for opening .AUP files.

However, the "audacity.exe" key that Windows created still remains set to Audacity 1.3.x, which no longer exists, making it difficult to set additional file associations for Audacity 2.0. More about this in my next post.

[Gale Andrews]

When Audacity is used to open a project by double clicking on the AUP file, Windows registers a key for audacity.exe in the "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTApplications" section.

As it does when you use "Open with" to open an audio file (if that key does not already exist). For that reason, you will get the same issue even if you don't install Audacity and use Audacity extracted from zips; you won't be able to associate identically named versions of Audacity with a file type.


Gale

[PGA]

Thanks for the detailed reply, Steve. I'll wait for the next post before adding further comment.

[steve]

(Referring only to Windows XP. Apparently Vista/Win 7 are different)

For that reason, you will get the same issue even if you don't install Audacity and use Audacity extracted from zips; you won't be able to associate identically named versions of Audacity with a file type.

Except that if you don't, and never have installed Audacity, using "Open With" does not create a permanent file association. The file will open that one time, but to make the file association "stick" Windows tells the user to use "Folder Options control panel":

create-association.png (9.36 KiB) Viewed 2030 times

By using the Folder Options control panel it IS possible to create multiple file associations from one file type to multiple instances of Audacity with identical file names. However, for this to work the user must work around a bug in Windows and manually enter "%1" after the path to the executable.

openwith.png (19.2 KiB) Viewed 2030 times

Somewhat confusingly there will be a maximum of 2 icons in the "Open with" list - one of which refers to the registry key
audacity.exe > shell > open
and the other (if there is a second icon) refers to the registry key
aup_auto_file > shell > name > command

browse.png (15.94 KiB) Viewed 2030 times