Saving online .pdfs for Adobe Problem/Troubleshooting

Opened and saved some manufacturer's .pdfs for a PC. When I went to open them, they weren't associated with any program. So I right clicked on one and selected open and then selected Adobe Reader, which is the only reader I have to date, from the "open with" dialog. However, when I went to place a check mark in the "use this program to open all files of this type" box, it was grayed out, and the check couldn't be placed. They both opened fine, just remain unassociated with a program.

All the other .pdfs I have saved previously are associated with Adobe reader, so what gives with these two files?

I'm using XP, and I tried the "Set Program access and Defaults". XP doesn't give me the option there to set .pdf associations...

I tried running the repair option for the program from Add/Remove but nothing.

I don't want to have to remove and then reinstall the reader, so I'm hoping someone knows of a trick...

:cool Anyone by chance delved deeply enough into XP to know where associations are stored in the OS? I'm not going to attempt some stupid hex edit or whatever...just curious. I assume the supported associations for each program are added by the Windows Installer to some .dll someplace when the program is installed in Windows...

UPDATE:
Ran a couple of tests with Excel, LibreOffice, and Paint.NET to make sure the associations for new documents weren't all broken. Problem didn't happen with new documents.

That went OK, so I saved another .pdf from the net. I noticed that I had the option to save the file as "All types" or as a "Adobe .pdf file". Well, the default was "All types". That turned out to be the problem. When I select save as "Adobe .pdf file" the file is saved as an Adobe file. I never had change the "Save as" file type before with .pdfs.

I am using Opera 12.?, so I tried this with IE8, and the save dialog presented only the option to save as an Adobe .pdf. So it's an Opera thing I guess.

This takes me back to 3.1. Not sure why Opera chose to add that dialog. They don't seem to have done it for .html saves...

I'm still bothered that I can't choose to associate the files 9.pdf file types) with the XP "Open with" dialog. I guess it's a weird little problem, but it will bother me nonetheless. Oh well...

Anyone with any reason why the "open with" "use this program to open all files of this type" dialog check box could be broken...you know too much about PCs. But seriously, if you do, your are the Major Geek...:major

 

Try going to taskmanager and Processes and trminate , explorer.exe, then after that , use Ctrl+Alt+ Delete to get taskmanager back , click, Applications , new task and type in , explorer.exe, then ok. See if that helps buddy.

 

I've seen a few .PDFs from the web act strange. Can you manually change the file type on one of these problematic PDFs and then double click it to see if it opens normally?

 

Afternoon Cipher...I tried adding a .pdf to the end of the file name. Is this what you mean? Weird...when I do, I get a message that a file by this name already exists, even though the icon for the file says it's just a "File". What the heck type of file is a "File".

It has to be something weird Opera added for me to be able to save this as a file of no type whatsoever. It's getting to me that it retains its identity as a .pdf, anyway somehow or at least seems to as far as I can tell...

 

Claw (Nick T)...this another one of your tricks? I know they work, but I'm not very good with tricks. Shutting down Explorer.exe starts me trembling. I just know nothing about that process (hardly anything about any of them, honestly :cool)...

 

Leave alone then buddy, it's a long shot anyway, but I did have that happen to a friend and for some odd reason that worked, it should have had nothing to do with it, but it worked. Leave alone if you have doubt buddy, better safe than sorry.

 

Copy/Rename it to something different, add a character like A to it. then change the file type manually. Always good to work with a copy anyway... I've seen copy and pasting one of these PDFs do the trick in itself...

 

OK, thanks Cipher.

I already managed to get the file from the net. Once I realized I had the choice to select it as an Adobe Reader Document in the Opera save dialog, I did that, and it worked fine. I just never had to do that before. I only have the one reader...

 

If you are reading a lot of PDFs, I suggest you have more than one reader. I do a lot of high end PDF work, and the fact is some PDFs trip up even the experts when it comes to opening issues. I have seen many that Adobe won't handle, but Foxit has no troubles with. Sumatra is another decent reader. I suspect it is something going on in the creation process that causes these problems.

You can copy the content and create a new PDF in some cases to fix them as well...

 

Thanks for the tip Cipher. I've heard alot about the other readers, but I haven't tried one out yet. I think if/when I do, I'll be looking for one of the tabbed ones...

 

To me this sounds like the files were saved without an extension (.pdf). In your Windows Explorer, do you display files with the full filename + extension?

 

I don't.

The best I can tell, the save option in Opera which is used as the default for .pdfs creates files that retain their identity as a .pdf, but lose it according to Windows.

I think you're right pwillener that the file ends up with no extension.

Hopefully the picture shows what I mean...

 

You should be able to just append the file extension (.pdf), but you earlier wrote that a file with this name already exists. So rename it to something that does not exist, and append the .pdf extension.