Problem transfering personal configurations between Pc's

Kelly Bellis · Post by **Kelly Bellis** » Mon Oct 20, 2003 6:03 pm

Hi Helios - thanks for the How-To tip. I did exactly as outlined in the Help file - Exporting from a WinME machine to a WinXP Pro machine.

Some of the settings (added document classes) were successfully registered with Windows; however, none of the previously associated files were. Any thoughts or suggestions How-To export ALL of the settings from one registry to the other?

Thanks for any reply.

Kelly

maniac · Post by **maniac** » Mon Oct 20, 2003 8:10 pm

file associations aren't handled by textpad - windows does that, so it would be kept somewhere else - and transfering that from ME to XP is probably a bad idea, since I'm sure they handle file associations differently. i guess you might have to just add all the file associations back on XP

Kelly Bellis · Post by **Kelly Bellis** » Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:23 pm

In TextPad, under the Configure menu item, the Preferences dialog box allows users to associate files with TextPad. In previous releases of TextPad, users were encouraged to make those associations from within TextPad rather than from File Manager or Windows Explorer. Is that no longer the case?

When I transfered the regsitry settings from the WinME machine, all of those file associations with text pad were transferred into the registry settings on the WinXP (Pro) box, but they don't show up under the Preferences dialog box from within TextPad. So I guess I'll just re-enter them all as you have suggested.

You mention that

transfering that from ME to XP is probably a bad idea

, but TextPad's Help file doesn't highlight any distinction between which PCs this works with and which ones are forbidden, and I wasn't able to find any other discussion on this board concerning it. Thanks for helping make it a little clearer for me.

Kelly

maniac · Post by **maniac** » Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:55 pm

Yes, textpad allows you to do that in the options, but the associations are still kept in the same area with the rest of window's file associations.

Post by **bbadmin** » Tue Oct 21, 2003 8:57 am

If you make file associations from within TextPad, it knows how to reinstate them to their previous setting, if you cancel the association. Otherwise there is no advantage.

The problem with transferring associations to another PC is that they are not located under a single key in the registry. Each is composed of two keys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. For example, the .txt association is established as follows:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt: (Default) = TextPad.txt
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TextPad.txt

When Explorer is asked to open a file with a .txt extension, it looks up the first line in the registry, determines what the value of (Default) is, and then looks that key up in the registry. Below that will be an Open subkey, with information about which application to run, and how to pass the filename to it. Hence, you need to export a pair of keys for each association.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions