Welcome back to our blog series on Registry Error Insights!

To understand file associations, you first have to understand file extensions. The last three to four letters in a filename after the period, such as .doc or .docx, represent the file extension. Each extension is associated with a file type. In this case, the file type is Microsoft Word Document. Each application on your computer has a list of file types associated with it, and your Windows Registry has a record of those file types.

If a program is uninstalled incorrectly or deleted, and you try to open a file with a specific extension, Windows will try to launch that nonexistent program to open the file. This is because the entries in the registry that associate that file type to that program were not corrected. Registry Reviver makes sure that when a program is uninstalled, those file extensions are no longer associated with that program and that all your file associations are maintained correctly.