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Changing a file's extension: disabling the "If you change a file name extension, the file may become unusable..." warning
Changing a file's extension: disabling the "If you change a file name extension, the file may become unusable..." warning
- Is there a way to disable/turn off the warning message that appears whenever I change a file's extension?
I know Vista is trying to look out for me, but I am a big boy and I know what I am doing.
I know that renaming "Death Metal Polka.mp3" to "Death Metal Polka.jpg" will cause errors when I try to open the file with Windows Photo Gallery.
I know that renaming a file like "system32.dll" to "system32.xls" will have a detrimental effect on my computer.
I do not need Vista to hold my hand as I rename files to and from valid extensions.
Is there a configuration setting or registry key I can change to suppress the warning?
Thank you for you time.3 people need an answerI do too
All Replies
- Hi alexi_teague,
Thank you for using the Community Forums for Vista.
While I don't recommend doing this and I'll throw out the obligatory warning here,
Modifying REGISTRY settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of REGISTRY settings can be solved. Modifications of these settings are at your own risk
This should do it.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
See if the value of ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin
is anything other than 0, set it to 0 and Reboot.I hope this helps.
Please let us know if we can do anything else for you.
Matt
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.- Marked As Answer byJack - Support EngineerMSFT, ModeratorThursday, July 16, 2009 2:36 AM
- Unmarked As Answer byalexi_teague Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:19 PM
- Thanks for the tip Matt.
Unfortunately, while the ConsentPromptBehavior* keys are useful for shutting UAC up, they do not disable the warning about changing the file extension.
I initially changed the ConsentPromptBehaviorUser key to 0 since my regular user is not part of the admin group.
I rebooted my computer, but the warning message still appeared when I tried to change a file extension.
I then changed ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin to 0 and rebooted again.
I still did not have any luck; the warning message still appeared when I tried to change a file extension. - Hi alexi_teague
The simplest way to fix this issue is to make the file extensions hidden
To make the file extensions hidden, follow the below steps:
1. Open Windows Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options > View
2. Check the option Hide extensions for known file types.
Please Post back and let us know if this helped to resolve the issue - thank you
Ken
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.- Marked As Answer byKen - Former Support Engineer Friday, June 19, 2009 5:14 PM
- Unmarked As Answer byalexi_teague Friday, July 10, 2009 10:00 PM
- Marked As Answer byJack - Support EngineerMSFT, ModeratorThursday, July 16, 2009 2:36 AM
- Unmarked As Answer byalexi_teague Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:19 PM
- I do not want to hide the extensions, I just want to be able change them without Vista nagging me each and every time I do so.
For example I would like to be able to rename an image like BattleMime.jpeg to BattleMime.jpg without the warning message stopping and asking for for confirmation. - The Suggestion Matt - Support Engineer gave "should" have worked. I found that same suggestion on other Boards and people said it worked. I've not tried it on my machine yet, so I cannot confirm this. I will try to do this ASAP.
- I set both the ConsentPromptBehaviorUser and ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin to "0" and rebooted the computer.
I logged in using my regular, restricted "alexit" account and and the administrator account.
In both cases the changes completely removed the UAC prompts for administrative tasks (such as changing system environment variables), but it did not remove the confirmation dialogue window when I tried to rename a file extension.
- Ken, Microsoft Answers Support Engineer wrote:
2. Check the option Hide extensions for known file types.
How do you manage to come up with that as a solution? This message has been bugging me too, for years even. Ok, it is nice to hold the general users hands, but users with a little more experience, and know what they are doing, should be able to disable this irritating and time-consuming warning. Renaming file extensions is a task many users do every day, quite many files as well. Please provide a real answer for both Vista and XP. This got to be possible by changing or creating the correct registry key. Please! - I think one of the major key points everyone keeps forgetting is that Vista was designed with "Security" in mind. Not every personn out there is as "Tech Savy" as you and if they "accidentally" changed the file extension of an important file, lets say an .exe for example, then they will wonder why their program does not work. If they have a Warning Diaglog box stating "hey you're about to make a change that could affect your system" or whatever, then I think that's a good thing.
On the other hand, I agree with you that should be a Feature one should have the ability to turn on or off. People should not be messing around in the Registry regardless if they know what they are doing. IMO, Microsoft should have included a way for us Tech Savy folks to turn features on or off such as the ability to turn off some of these annoying dialog boxes. - So I guess I am simply out of luck then? Bummer... :/
- I think so. I haven't anything any better than what I already said. Sorry.
Matt
Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think. - I know it does not change the behaviour of Windows Explorer, but you could use a different file browser/manager, such as Konqueror, Altap Salamander, Total Commander, ZTreeWin, Unixtree, and many others.
- A bummer that there's no option to disable such dialog boxes.
Boxes like these are bugging me for years!
There are some other annoying ones, but this is probably the worst.
I have found a really effective way of dealing with these kind of things: RtvReco
This program can do stuff for you, when selected windows/dialogs are created (this is the simple explanation, it can do A LOT more).
Don't ask me whether it works on Vista or not, I have only used it on XP, which was really satisfying.- Edited byIts LouNGeR Wednesday, August 05, 2009 8:59 PM
- Edited byIts LouNGeR Wednesday, August 05, 2009 9:00 PM
I know it does not change the behaviour of Windows Explorer, but you could use a different file browser/manager, such as Konqueror, Altap Salamander, Total Commander, ZTreeWin, Unixtree, and many others.
On Vista?I have found a really effective way of dealing with these kind of things: RtvReco
Don't ask me whether it works on Vista or not, I have only used it on XP, which was really satisfying.
I will take a look at RtvReco.
It certainly looks promising.
If it works, I will ask our IS department to review the program and hopefully I will be able to install it at work.
As an interim kludge hack I have created a slew of scripts that change the most common extensions I use via the command line.
e.g. :
.txt -> .pl
.txt -> .sh
.txt -> .prn
.txt -> .macro
.macro -> .prn
.pcl -> .prn
.jpeg -> .jpg
.html -> .htm
.txt -> .asp
.txt -> .js
I added those to my right-click context menu as per my previous post .
