Windows Refusing to “Open With” Using Notepad++ Portable…

So, fed-up with an outdated, “sanctified” version of Notepad++ “published” by the IT team at my workplace on my work laptop, I uninstalled the published version, grabbed a copy of the portable version (choose the appropriate .zip or .7z package) and proceeded to live happily ever after…

Well… Not quite… Whenever I attempted to use Windows Explorer’s “Open with…” context menu option, attempting to select the Notepad++ portable’s executable would not have any result – the dialogue would just continue to sit there…

After some soul Google searching, I stumbled across the solution.

The registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\notepad++.exe\shell\open\command was still pointing at the uninstalled, (now) non-existent executable. Pointing it to the correct location made Notepad++ show up immediately as one of the selectable applications.

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