Windows 7: How to unlink All Programs from Photo Viewer.

In trying to open a JPEG picture in my document folder, I opened it with Windows Photo Viewer and also allowed the necessary permissions by way of the properties tab. That did not help and now ALL my programs have a Photo viewer icon attached to it and when I open a program like for instance Excel, a window pops up saying "Windows Photo Viewer can't open this picture because either Photo Viewer doesn't support this file format, or you don't have the latest updates to Photo Viewer." My OS is Win 7 Pro/64.Has anyone ever encountered a similar problem not necessarily Photo Viewer?

Hello Froggie,

You might see if downloading and merging the exe and lnk (LNK) options listed in the tutorial below to see if they may help. They will restore the default associations for these file extensions.

Default File Type Associations - Restore

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Brink, thanks for your suggestion. The problem is twofold as I see it.
1) I don't get the option to download to the desktop and
2) ALL my files and folders now are linked to or have the Windows Photo Viewer icon attached to it and they all at the final step give me the long message I posted in my original post.
So how do I remove the link to Windows Photo Viewer? Is is somehow linked thru my dll links and if so how to do it?
After that issue is resolved I can go back to why I'm unable to open my or some of my pictures.

If you had system protection turned on, then you could also do a system restore at boot using a restore point dated before this happened to hopefully undo and fix this for you.

Brink, the problem was created by me not watching what the file link extension was when I was clicking on my shortcut and then trying to open it with the wrong program. In other words I tried to open a lnk file extension with a JPEG file extension program. Had to go into the registry to clear it. Not recommended unless you are well versed in Registry manipulation. I didn't do it. I got the MS Answer desk tech do it for me as you get a 15 minute free diagnosis if you ask for it!

Brink told you how to fix it in the post right above this. Did you follow the instructions?

FliGi, thanks for the post.
I have done that once before and yes it works. However, I did it again not being aware exactly how I got into this mess. I marked the post as solved when I responded to Brink's post.
Thanks for taking the time to post.

Ah, ok, so it's solved now? Good.