To create or modify File Associations, use the following steps:

1.Double click on "My Computer".

2.Click on "View"

3.Click on "Options"

4.Click on the "File Types" tab.

5.Grab the scroll bar with the mouse pointer and scroll down until you see the file type that you want to edit.

6.Double click on it. (or single click then click "edit"). This brings up the "Edit File Types" sheet.

7.Notice the window at the bottom listing the associated actions. It probably says "Open". This list is exactly what you see on the action menu when you right click on this type of file. It is the list of possible actions for that file type.

8.Click on the "New" button. This brings up the "New Action" sheet.

9.In the top box labled "Action", type in a name for the new action. Common action names are View, Edit, Print, etc. but it can be whatever you like. It is only what appears on the action menu and does not actually determine the file type. The Actual File type is determined by "Mime Type" Drop down list. You can assign which letter is underlined on the action menu and will act as a shortcut key by preceeding the desired letter with the "&" (ampersand) character, e.g. "&Play" will appear on the menu as "Play". The "P" will become active as a shortcut key for that action.

10.Now fill in the box labled "Application used to perform action.". This is the command to start the program such as "C:\photoshp\photoshp.exe" ..just as you would type it at a command prompt. As stated above, in some cases you may need to add the variable "%1" to the end of the command.

11.Ignore the box labled "DDE" unless you know the applicaton is DDE compliant. (Dynamic Data Exchange) It is a sophisticated method of dynamic communication between Windows programs such as Word and Excel. (And they install the proper commands automatically) You probably won't ever have occasion to alter these settings.

12.Special Note for printing.If you want the action to be printing a text document with Notepad, the command is: Notepad.exe /p The /p tells Notepad to print the document. The print command varies between programs so you will have to check the documentation for the particular program you wish to print with.

13.Click OK. Repeat for as many other actions as you want. HINT: Browse throuth the other file types action commands and click the question mark then click on a box for an explanation of the command contained in it.

14.Click "Close".

PART 2.

To create, modify, or remove file associations, use the following steps:
1. Double-click My Computer.

2. On the View menu, click Options.

3. Click the File Types tab.
In this example I will use a simple .wav file association:
To create a file association, click New Type. A box will open with "Description of type",
enter i.e.; Wave Sound.
The box beside it says, "Associated Extension", enter i.e.; wav.
Then Click the "New" button and enter "open". In the "Application used to perform action" box, browse to the Device. In our example you would go to Windows and click Sndrec32.exe, then click OK and C:\WINDOWS\Sndrec32.exe will appear in the
"Application used to perform action" Box.
Then click OK until all the boxes are closed.
To modify an association, click the file type in the Registered File Types box, and then click Edit.
To remove an association, click the file type, and then click Remove.
When you double-click a file type without an association, Windows 95 opens a dialog box so you can create an association if you want.

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Reassociation using the Registry Editor:

1. Click the Start button.

2. Open the RUN box.

3. Type REGEDIT. That will open the registry.

4. CTRL+F will open the search box.

5. Enter your search phrase, in this example it will be gif, or jpg, one at a time.

6. You'll see the associations on the right side of the screen.

7. The F3 key will continue the search until you find what your looking for.

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This Section if for Advanced Users
Interaction of Extension

Windows 95 reserves four places to record files' association with particular .EXEs.
a. [Extensions] section in WIN.INI
b. H_C_R/ [extension key] /shell/open/command
c. H_C_R/ [filetype key] /shell/open/command
d. H_L_M/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Extensions/

There are two ways that a file type can be associated to a EXE. The first is under user definable options in file browsers. In such case, "a" is used in File Manager and "b" is used under Windows Explorer. The second is by application's request and the extension info are saved in "d".

Now, so many keys and so little uses, when in fact "c" is the only one that matters!

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WIN.INI Extentions

1. When a new entry is added into WIN.INI [extensions], system has to reboot to recognize the new extension. During the next boot, this new extension start registering entries in "b".
Thereafter the entry in WIN.INI has become obsolete. During every bootup this redundant process is gone through again and again, and thus it wastes a little time and increases the chances of corrupted registry.

2. When "file type" is presented in [extension key] (@, data), the command "Open" will ignore any entry in [extension key]/shell. Instead, the correct routine is guided to the associated [filetype key]/shell.

3. Windows 95 copes and pastes the whole WIN.INI [extensions] section into "d".
In addition some applications enjoy being the superior controller for a particular extension and thus register themselves into "d". Guess which company produces those applications?

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Reset All Associations To Their Default Value

The solution is to go to Windows\inf\shell.inf and right click on the inf file,
then Click Install. This resets all associations to their default. I did this
and it worked like a charm. Who would have guessed.

Fixing Broken File Associations With File Manager

If you accidentally associate a particular file extension with the wrong application, you can try fixing this problem by using Windows Explorer's File Types dialog box. However, you'll soon discover that Windows Explorer won't let you remove a single extension from a registered file type without deleting the entire entry and starting over.
Fortunately, you can use Windows 3.x's File Manager to fix the problem quickly and easily.
To begin, open the Run dialog box, type winfile, and press [Enter].
Once File Manager opens, pull down the File menu and select the Associate... command. Then, in the Files with Extension text box type the extension that's associated with the wrong application.
When you do, you'll see the errant file association appear in the Associate With text box.
To remove the file association, scroll to the top of the list of file types and select (None).

Then, click OK to completely remove the association from your system. 

How To Reassociate a File Type

Method 1:
You can change the association of a file type using the Open With dialog box. While holding down Shift, right-mouse click on a SELECTED icon of the file type you want to change and select Open With. (If you don't hold down Shift, this command won't appear.) In the Open With dialog box, choose the application you'd like to use to open files of this type, make sure you've selected Always Use This Program to Open This Type of File, and click on OK.

Method 2:
To open an application when you double-click a related document file, the file’s type must be defined in the Registry. If the file type is defined in the Registry, it appears in a list of file types that you can associate with an application.
For information about associating a file type with an application so that the application runs when you double-click a file, see online Help.
If a file type has been associated with an application, you can reassociate the file type to a different application.

To reassociate a file type

1.  Double-click My Computer, and then click the View menu.

2. Click Options, and then click the File Types tab.

3. Click the type of document you want to reassociate, and then click Edit.

4. In the Actions list, click Open, and then click Edit.

5. In the Application Used To Perform Action area, type the path to the application you want to associate with the file type.

Some applications, such as Microsoft Word, associate multiple extensions with a file type. For example, a Microsoft Word document is associated by default with both a .DOC and an .RTF extension. This can cause problems if a user wants to change which application opens a particular file. To reassociate a file type with an application under these conditions, you must delete all extensions registered to that application, and then re-associate each file type with an application. In addition, you must redefine Open, Print, and DDE commands for each file type. To do this, in My Computer or Windows Explorer, click the View menu, click Options, and then click the File Type tab.

If you click New in the File menu in Windows Explorer or in the context menu, a list of objects appears, such as Folder or Microsoft Excel 5.0 Worksheet. Clicking an object creates a new object in Windows Explorer or on the desktop. You can add an object to this list by adding a key called ShellNew to the corresponding file extension in the Registry for the related filename extension:

Hkey_Classes_Root\.ext

After creating the ShellNew key, you need to add a new string value called FileName with a data value that equals the path name to a template file in the ShellNew subdirectory. For example:

filename="c:\windows\shellnew\excel.xls"

Tip  In the Open dialog box in a Windows-based application, you can request that multiple file types be displayed by separating the file types with a semicolon. For example, to see .DOC, .TXT, and .RTF files in an Open dialog box you would type *.doc; *.txt; *.rtf.

Application takes over Association

Ever encounter an application that designates itself as the default program for a file extension previously owned by another program? The quickest way to get out of this jam under Win9x is to find an example of an incorrectly associated file. Click on the file once to select it, then hold down the Shift key while you right-click on it. Choose Open With. Select the correct program, check the "Always use this program to open this type of file" box and click on OK. Or, if you don't find the program, click on the Other button and navigate to the correct program on your drive.