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[Fixed] Foxit 9.3 and Sumatra leave FileExts registry key that affects local associations

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October 24, 2018 - 1:13pm
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vhugo2
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[Fixed] Foxit 9.3 and Sumatra leave FileExts registry key that affects local associations

I have Portable Apps in a folder on my C: drive, Windows 7. Foxit 9.3 is my default PDF reader. When I launched Foxit from PortableApps, it created a registry entry in HKEY-Current user-Software-Microsoft-Windows-CurrentVersion-Explorer-FileExts-PDF and created a string PDF portable or somesuch. As a result some of my PDF files would only open with the PortableAppp version, and some with the permanent installed version.If I closed PortableApps, the files requiring it would not open. I deleted the PDF portable string and now all is well again, but users should beware of the danger of using PortableApps Foxit.

The same thing happened with Sumatra. Not good.

Is this a problem with other apps? I am now afraid of using PortableApps for fear it might make nasty changes to host computers.

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October 24, 2018 - 1:38pm
John T. Haller
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Possible Bug

It looks like there's a possible bug in the current version of Sumatra that is adding that key. It's specifically not supposed to do that unless it detects that it is "installed" within the uninstall registry keys on a given machine. This per the code I reviewed in github. You don't have Sumatra PDF installed anywhere correct?

As for Foxit, this could be some new behavior in a recent release as I know it didn't use to do that. It could be the same situation, though, as it sees it is installed and tries to "fix" its association. I'll do some testing with an installed copy and come up with a workaround to ensure it doesn't happen. Likely either preserving the original setting while running or making the portable version think there's not a local one installed while running.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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October 25, 2018 - 3:09pm
(Reply to #2)
vhugo2
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John, thank you for your

John, thank you for your comment. What I did was remove the registry string referring to the Foxit portable. All my PDFs now open with my installed Foxit. I'll try never to use Foxit portable unless absolutely necessary, such as when I need to add a signature to a document.

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April 29, 2019 - 1:40pm
John T. Haller
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Fixed in Foxit Portable 9.5.0.20723

This is fixed in Foxit Portable 9.5. It will still create an empty entry for .pdf if it doesn't exist, but won't create a value within that will affect local associations. I'll check what's up with Sumatra.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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November 14, 2019 - 7:05pm
John T. Haller
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Fixed in Sumatra

I'd forgotten to test the next release of Sumatra back when it came out. I tested SumatraPDF Portable 3.1.2 and it does not appear to create it anymore either.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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