How to change .vhd file association to open with Windows Explorer?

Question

I'm having an issue with .vhd files not opening with Windows Explorer liek the way .vhdx does. Before it was just unrecognized, now I've accedentally change it to Adobe Acrobat. I've tried changing it though all the Windows 10 settings and Control Panel settings, but nothing is letting me set it. The Windows 10 settings either say that there is no app installed that can be assigned to .vhd, or when I try to manually set it to C:\Windows\explorer.exe it says the program selected cannot be assigned. I also noticed that I can't find the file extension for .vhdx anywhere in the Windows 10 fiel association settings.

Answer 1

.vhd files need to get mounted. So, with a simple powershell script you can mount vhd easily.

• First open regedit.
• Open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.vhd\shell
• Create new key named VHDMount
• Create String value MUIVerb and set value to Mount
• Create Dword value CommandFlags and set value to 10
• Create new subkey named command
• Set Deafult value to powershell -c Mount-VHD -Path "%1"

Now if you double click a .vhd file it will mount and open in explorer.

Answer 2

This can also be achieved by using the following, which is a bit more simple.

• Open regedit
• Open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.vhd
• Set the existing (Default) REG_SZ to Windows.VhdFile