Windows 10: Suddenly I cannot open any of my pictures! It asks which app I want to use to open them!

I tried to open some of my pictures in My pictures and NONE of them will open! It asks which app I should use. **** is this??!!! I don't use apps!

:)

 

Can't open pictures

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



I understand that you are getting error when trying to open Pictures on your computer. I'll certainly assist you with the issue.



However, please let us know:

• May I know the default application that is set to open pictures?
• Which build version of Windows 10 is installed on the computer?

It could be possible that the application set to open pictures is not working properly. If Photos app is set as the default application to open
pictures, I would suggest you to refer the troubleshooting steps mentioned in the article

Fix problems with apps from Microsoft Store.



Let us know how it goes.



Regards,

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator

 

Mail app will not open on 10041.

Hello Adam,

This is the suggested solution below if you haven't already tried it.

In this Windows 10 build 10041, the Mail, Calendar, and People apps may be broken due to a licensing issue with the Store Beta. To get these apps working again, you need to follow these steps:

• Open powershell as administrator
• Run the command Get-appxprovisionedpackage –online | where-object {$_.packagename –like “*windowscommunicationsapps*”} | remove-appxprovisionedpackage –online
• Re-install Mail, People and Calendar from the Store (green tile)

 

Can I customize the list of suggest apps in the "Open with" menu?

Well, I hope this helps the OP - it took a while. I tried 'Default Program Editor' (DPE) and it did indeed add (or remove) items, but when I tried to specifically add Word to pdf opening, it failed - it went through the motions, but nothing happened. So I started again, playing with settings for opening .doc files. This seemed to work: initially in explorer I had 3 programs appear in the 'default' list that pops up on a rt-click>open-with:



and this is what the relevant bit of the Registry showed:



Don't ask me why just 3 of those 8 (a to h) programs show up (maybe the 'instant' list is limited to three? - no, see later) - anyway, I used DPE to remove Wordpad from the list: when saving the edit as a REG file, this is what I got:

Code:

and the result in Explorer was:



and the registry now shows:



Note how item 'g' from the list has been removed (it seems there is no issue with having a letter missing). I then messed about trying to open a .doc file with various other programs, and they all started to appear in the 'instant' list:




So I thought 'well, that is easy - just open a pdf once in Word and it should appear'. So back to trying to open PDFs: but however many times I tried, Word would never appear.



even though there were any number of entries in the Registry 'Open With' list, including Word:



So what did DPE make of this - well, it showed some of the entries:



Although Word is shown, it doesn't appear on a rt-click. Its entry can be removed, but that doesn't help. So my attention was drawn to the existence of another folder below 'OpenWithList', namely 'OpenWithProgids', and that contained a specific ref to Sumatra (my preferred program for PDFs). Looking back at the same entry for .docx, I found this:



so I added an identical Word.Document.12 ref to the list for PDFs:



I think IrfanView is there as it got added during my experiments! I now get this in Explorer:


Hurrah! I then tried to use DPE to remove the redundant entries, and got this as a .REG file:
Code:

But when i merge that with the registry, the IrfanView item does not get deleted:



and as seen in the registry:



so I deleted it by hand, and at last have the entries I (or rather, the OP) want:




Note that my manually added reg entry is of type Binary', as there seems to be no way to add a value of type 'None'.

So it seems that DPE cannot cope with entries in the 'Progids' list, and something makes some programs fall into that list, rather than the 'openwithlist'. I am sorry for any typos above, or pictures in the wrong place - can't be bothered to check it too thoroughly. Hope it helps someone!

atb, Martin