I had ACDSee on my computer for a while, and then decided to uninstall it. Imagine my surprise when suddenly all my image files (jpg, gif, even psd) became inaccessible. Now when I look at details, it says every gif file is an “ACDSee GIF” file, and won’t open them without ACDSee on the computer. The only program that I can open the image files in is Photoshop, and when I try to re-save the images, it tells me the files are locked! How could this possibly happen? Is there any way to fix it? Even when I load old backed up files of gifs and jpgs (from before I got the cursed ACDSee), it still wants to open them with ACDSee. How do I convince my computer to just read image files normally again?
You’ve lost your file associations for these files.
Select a gif file (single-click). Then shift-right click on it and select “open with…”. Select the utility you want to associate with this file and make sure the “always use this program” choice is checked below. Select “OK” and your association is stored.
HTH -B
Assuming this is Windows XP, right-click an image, and select “Open With…”, then choose “Windows Picture and Fax Viewer”, and check the box that says “always use selected program to open files of this type”. Click OK and you should be set.
If you’re using Win 98 or ME, you’ll have to highlight the file, and hold down shift while right-clicking, then choose a different program to view them. I’m not sure what the default was on 98.
Okay, I followed the suggestions - I’m running Windows 98 - and I seem to have convinced it to use Photoshop as a default for now. However, when I look at the file details, it still says the files are “ACDSee GIF”, or “ACDSee JPG”.
Also - does anyone know what the default viewer should be for 98? I seem to remember, back before I got ACDSee, that it would just open up pictures in Explorer if there was no program specified. Doesn’t seem to be any obvious option for a Windows 98 standard default viewer though.