Manually Add an Application that was Not Installed

Greets Everyone.
Thank you for the incredibly helpful forum!!

I have a weird issue that has cropped up with my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I decided to upgrade the version of my Scite and there were no options for installing it. I simply unzipped the archive and copied it to a new folder in my Program Files (x86) folder. I then renamed my old winscite to bust the links, keeping it in case something went wrong, and created new desktop, startmenu, and taskbar links to the new version.

The application opens up just fine, and works just fine. But when I want to use it to open specific file types/extensions, I cannot use it. I tried right clicking on a file, say a PHP file, and then chose Open with.../Choose default program from the right click context menu in Windows Explorer, and of course, Scite is not listed in the recommended programs options. I expand "OTHER" and still do not see it, of course. So I clicked BROWSE, navigate to the new scite, and double click it. This is where the weird stuff starts. The browse dialog box closes, yet scite is not an option still. Nothing changes actually.

Scite is not listed as a default program, and I cannot add the new scite as one. I have no idea how I can tell Windows that I want to open the new scite with ANY file type.

Is there a registry modification I need to perform? How do I remove ALL options/recommended apps associated with a file type? Then maybe when I double click that file type, I can tell Windows where to find scite and it will work.

I have seen all sorts of things before, since Windows 3.1 but I have never seen this before.

Thank you for your time and hopefully your suggestions.

whs said:

So I clicked BROWSE, navigate to the new scite, and double click it. This is where the weird stuff starts. The browse dialog box closes, yet scite is not an option still. Nothing changes actually.

You have to double click on the .exe of that program.

Yes I did all that. Every which way you can imagine. And now I have FINALLY figured out what caused the issue and was lucky to find the solution once I knew what to search for. Add this one to your Windows 7 fix/tweak databases folks!

The problem was that the application in classes of the registry was still there and pointing in a different direction. Setting this value to the new correct location fixed the issue.
Problems with "File Association" in Windows 7 64-bit - Microsoft Community

It would be nice if Microsoft added some code that validated paths to applications referred to in this part of the registry tree, and reset/removed those associations when the paths proved invalid. I am assuming that when I tried to point to SciTE in a new location, even though it was a newer version, since it was found in the registry already but with an invalid path, an error was thrown and whoever wrote the code just exited the routine on the error thrown instead of updating the application path to the newly selected application path. Tisc Tisc!

whs said:

Very good. Thanks for reporting back. I guess we learned something.

Yes sir, me too. And the more I read here, the more I learn. I absolutely LOVE this forum!!