Sunday, August 03, 2008

Restoring Vista Default JPG Viewer

This may sound absurd but if you have ever installed an application such as Macromedia Fireworks and your default JPEG viewer has been changed it can be a nightmare to get back to the original viewer.

Officially it is the Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery, but attempting to change the default program back to this is not enough,, oh no, that will bring up your whole gallery of images.

Removing any user defined file extension default for jpg, jpeg or jpe within the registry editor (regedit) will simply take you back to square one,, with fireworks.

The only way to get back to the factory default is to actually carry out stage one (right click image and open with, then select default, but switch the view to not just "programs" but "all files" and within "Program Files" -> "Windows Photo Gallery" and then choose "PhotoViewer.dll" and at last it works again!