A Minor Annoyance With File Associations

[Michael McBroom]

I just recently put together a new computer system for my DAW and installed Win10 on it. Which means I've been having to reinstall everything. The very first program I reinstalled was Cakewalk. I'd been having some problems with my old Win7 system's audio, so I wanted to make sure that was a thing of the past. It was -- or is.  But just for the sake of backward compatibility -- or grins and giggles or whatever -- I also reinstalled my old copy of SPlat.

Now  when I did that, Win10 did something I wasn't expecting. It re-associated my CW files with SPlat. Annoying. So I went into Settings > Default Apps > Choose Default Apps by File Type -- where I expected to be able to tell Win10 that I wanted my CW files associated with CWbBL. But Noooo. The only option this brain-dead function allows me to do is choose SPlat. Now, this isn't the sort of thing I've had to do much of in the past, but I don't recall earlier versions of Windows being quite so myopic.

So, considering my options, I thought, hey, I'll just d/l CW again from Bandlab. But nope, the only way I can do that is if I UNINSTALL it first. Grrrr. Well, I'm not looking to go quite so drastic as all that, although if I have to, I will. So I'm deciding to cool my jets for now, but what I am wondering is this -- when it's time for another CW update, will I get my CW file associations back as well? Anybody happen to know this?

 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Michael McBroom

[John Vere]

Common knowledge and much talk about here is that it is best to install all your old Cakewalk products first even if you just do bare bones of older versions like X2. The last thing we install is Bandlab Cakewalk. This seems to avoid this issue. 

But I think it's easy to fix. 

Go to the file be it a midi file or a CWP file/ Right click  / Open With/  / More Apps if it isn't showing/ And if not on the list at all you might have to browse to the Program Files/Cakewalk / Cakewalk Core folder and Choose the Cakewalk icon. Make sure to check  the always use this App box option box

 I don't think the Choose apps in settings works very well so I never use it. 

Edited February 10, 2021 by John Vere

[Michael McBroom]

Hi John, so I take it that your answer to my question is a no, then.

I tried your alternative and mine doesn't work like  yours since yours is already defaulting to the CW app. On my system, SPlat is now the default if I were to click on any of those files. And I don't know what going to the Core folder is supposed to accomplish. You can't change associations from there -- or at least, I can't.

I think it'll be easer at this point to just uninstall and reinstall CW. That should take care of the problem, right?