Computer Defaults

After you have discovered Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 in screenshots, in this tutorial you will see how you can open images with it and how to make this program your default image viewer.

One of the things that became obvious after publishing our series on how to set default programs, associate file types and set up AutoPlay settings, is that Windows 7 has limited capabilities for setting all these things. Fortunately for us, there are third party programs, such as the Default Programs Editor that allow you to do all this plus customize context menus. In this tutorial I will share where you can get this cool program from and how it works.

I will continue our series on customizing default programs with a tutorial about how to set defaults for certain activities like: web browsing, e-mail access, media player or instant messaging. This can be done from the 'Set Program Access and Computer Defaults' panel. In this tutorial I will show you where to find this panel and how to use it to set your defaults.

You have probably noticed that, every time you plug-in a new media, like a flash drive, CD or DVD in your computer an AutoPlay window appears showing you a list of general options, specific for each type of media or device. You can choose any of these options or set a default action to be run automatically each time you insert that type of media. In this tutorial I will show how to work with the AutoPlay feature and customize it to have the behavior you desire.

When you install programs on your computer, you may want to associate different file types to be opened with specific programs. For example, you may want '.mp3' files to be opened with Winamp or iTunes and your '.avi' files with Windows Media Player. In a previous tutorial I have shown how to set your default programs in Windows 7. However, the list of default programs doesn't include all installed applications and doesn't help set the defaults for all extensions and protocols. This article will continue the series of articles and show how to set a program to always open a specific file type or protocol, independent of the fact that it is shown in the list of Default Programs or not.

With this article we are going to start a small series on choosing the programs that Windows 7 uses as defaults for different kind of tasks. In this episode I will show you how to set the default programs for your user account. This includes opening the list of default programs, setting how to open all file types or protocols a program can handle and how to choose from the program's list of capabilities, the specific file extensions or protocols that you want to be opened by it.