Set File Type Associations (FTA) on Windows 10 using UEM

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

Finally a way to define File Type Associations on Windows 10!

Christoph Kolbicz reverse engineered the hash used by Microsoft to set FTA info in the registry. He created a tool that allows you to set any FTA on Windows 8/10 and 2012/2016.

Now you can finally link PDF and HTML extensions to another app than Edge. Or make any other change you would like.

When you combine this with VMware UEM, you can automatically set the right FTA's at logon.

Just create a UEM Logon Task to start the tool with the right parameters. You can find the tool, documentation and more info here:

SetUserFTA: UserChoice Hash defeated – Set File Type Associations per User or Group on Windows 8/10 ...

All credits go to Christoph Kolbicz.

[JohnTwilley]

REF:  "Christoph Kolbicz reverse engineered the hash used by Microsoft"

Did Christoph's process make it into DEM, or is there a separate process being used for the FTA?

I'm asking more out of curiosity...

[DEMdev]

Hi JohnTwilley,

I won't go into implementation details, but with DEM 9.10 there is no dependency on Christoph's tool.

[boast1570]

We're on 9.10 and are having trouble with FTA's being overwritten and hijacked by Edge Chromium. When the user first logs in, they have the right defaults, but then Windows detects an issue(I suspect mismatched hashes in the .reg) and reverts back to Edge for .PDFs. I feel like we're missing something with the default Windows Common Setting for default applications. 

[DEMdev]

Hi @boast1570,

To roam the FTA's, you're using the Windows Common Setting that we introduced in 9.10?

What's being logged to FlexEngine-DefaultApplications.log? If Windows resets an association, how does the timing of the logging in that log file correspond with the message(s) in the Applications and Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\Shell-Core\AppDefaults event log?