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#1
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Cannot reset default apps
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903.
Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
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#2
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Cannot reset default apps
On 10/11/2019 02:37, Ken Springer wrote:
Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. Please repost your question without treating Microsoft with contempt. It's your stupidity and low intelligence that's a problem here, NOT Microsoft. -- With over 1,000,000 million devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows. |
#3
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Cannot reset default apps
On 11/9/19 8:43 PM, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
On 10/11/2019 02:37, Ken Springer wrote: Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. Please repost your question without treating Microsoft with contempt. It's your stupidity and low intelligence that's a problem here, NOT Microsoft. And I see you've taken yours to a record low level. Have you gotten out of kindergarten summer school yet? -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#4
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Cannot reset default apps
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI.* Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix -- Take care, Jonathan ------------------- LITTLE WORKS STUDIO http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com |
#5
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Cannot reset default apps
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that Github item. https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode". It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device, has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for a tablet mode of operation. What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration to continue to be screwed up. https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode ******* There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first", and see if it recognizes the problem. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10 Paul |
#6
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Cannot reset default apps
Ken Springer wrote:
Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Windows 10 - Open the Windows 10 Feedback Hub from the Start menu, or enter Feedback Hub into the search field in the taskbar. - Click Report a Bug. - Follow the instructions to send in your issue. If users don't report bugs to Microsoft (connect.microsoft.com stopped functioning back in Jan 2018), Microsoft won't know about them. Hoping wherever else you cite a bug has people there that know people at Microsoft that can open a bug ticket doesn't work well, or not at all. TwinUI = Tablet Windows User Interface It's a library (of functions). While there are many copies of twinui.dll found in various folders, the copies of importance are at: C:\Windows\System32\twinui.dll C:\Windows\SysWOW64\twinui.dll Looks to be an app launcher. I found out about Microsoft's app launchers by accident. While you might set a web browser to be the default one, Windows actually uses "Internet Browser" to decide. Somehow when presented with the choice of what to make the default web browser (which was a popup, as I recall), I didn't know what the hell was "Internet Browser". Sounded like some knockoff variant, like Comodo's Dragon, or one of the numerous variants of Edge, IE, Chrome, or Firefox. So, of course, I picked Chrome (that was what I was using at the time). What happened thereafter when I double-clicked on a .url shortcut was that Chrome would load but instead of rendering the retrieved web page would show it as code, like a text editor. Go to the Defaults Apps wizard, scroll to the bottom, and click on "Choose default apps by file type". Scroll all the way down to the ..url filetype. You'll see "Internet Browser" is the handler for the ..url filetype. Since it got changed to Chrome (which would display the content of a web page instead of render it), I had to change this filetype association back to Internet Browser. Apparently the Internet Browser is used to decide which default web client into which the .url gets passed as an argument. It's like a front switchboard directing the URL string to whichever is the currently defined default web browser. Without this, the .url string doesn't get passed as a hyperlink, but instead the web browser is told to display the web page at that URL (rather than render it). You can, for example, open .txt files in a web browser to view them there instead of, say, Notepad. I'm glad that I tried double-clicking on a .url shortcut soon after the prompt asking which web browser to make the default, so I remembered about making that choice (and not knowing what the **** was "Internet Browser", which I probably saw as "Internet Explorer"). If you run "assoc .url" in a command shell, you'll see that filetype is associated with InternetShortcut, not with the executable file (for a web browser). https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/what-is-twinui.html Looks like TWinUI is similar, acting as a frontend to decide how to launch an app. That it shows as a default app means there is no longer a default shown. Users report that they cannot change the default app by going into the Default Apps wizard. However, I suspect they don't scroll all the way down to the bottom to look at the other methods of defining default apps by filetype or by protocol. That's what I discovered was needed to get back to using Internet Browser as the default handler for .url filetypes (to get the selected web browser to render the document) instead of pointing at a web browser's executable file (which merely loaded the document in the web browser, like using Notepad to view the source of a web page). See if the following works: - In the taskbar's searchbox, enter "default apps". - Open the Default Apps wizard. - Choose default apps by filetype. - Scroll down until you find the filetype (e.g., jpg, url, doc) to which you want to assign a handler (the default app). - Click on the current choice for a handler (or "Choose a default"), and pick the handler you want for that filetype from the popup list. Only apps that have previously registered themselves for what filetypes they can handle will be listed. Alternatively, you were likely trying to open a file or whatever a shortcut was pointing at when you double-clicked on it. Instead, right-click on the file (in File Explorer) and, from the context menu, choose "Open with" and then specify the executable file for the handler in which you want to load that file. If the Open With context menu entry doesn't show your handler in its recent list, you'll have to browse to the handler (used to be called Browse, now called Choose Another App). That the default apps got set to TwinUI likely means some registry corruption regarding the filetype associations, or you selected something you shouldn't in a popup prompt asking you to select a default, or you used a tweaker (that caused the corruption), or by malware. I made the association mistake for one filetype (.url). If all default apps are pointing to TwinUI, that wouldn't be from you making a selection for one filetype. TwinUI shows up when the filetype or protocol associations somehow got screwed up, so Windows points to the app launcher. One suggestion is to restore the registry from before the corruption happened, but users may not know about the corruption until long after it occurred, and most don't schedule periodic backups of their registry. If you schedule periodic image backups of the file system, you can use those for a recovery, as they should include the registry files. Alas, most users don't do backups at all, plus restoring to a backup image means losing all wanted changes created after that backup. All the Powershell script does (mentioned in Paul's reply) from the Github site is to re-register all the apps, but not for programs. Registering an app has its filetype associations defined (those that are defined in the package's manifest for the app). Well, you can do that, too, as described above. The script only takes care of the filetype associations for the installed UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps which are those coded using WinRT (Windows Runtime) instead of using the Win32 APIs. The apps get re-registered using the script, but not the filetypes associated to Win32 programs that you installed (which usually use MSI to install). So, even after using the script (which merely makes easier to re-associate filetypes than the manual method above), I don't see that it will help to re-register filetype associations for the Win32 programs that you installed. For example, you could install VideoLAN's VLC media player either as a Win32 program (the old way) or as an UWP app. Personally I would stick with the Win32 version. If you installed VLC as an app, there will be a package saved in Windows, so the script will re-register the app which consequently also re-registers all its filetype associations (well, the default filetype association since the program may list all filetypes and let you choose). If you installed the Win32 VLC player, there will no package to run through the script. Win32 installers will register what filetypes the program handles, that that's just to specify which it handles, not that it will be the default handler for those filetypes (although often that is the assumption made by the installer programmer). In the registry, a filetype can have multiple handlers defined, because multiple installed programs can handle the same filetype, like you installed VLC, Irfanview, Paint.Net, and so on. A default might be selected in that filetype definition in the registry, but it's not required when a program or app adds its list of supported filetypes to the registry. For example: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\OpenWithProgids will likely have multiple data items with each pointing to a handler that declared it could handle that filetype. |
#7
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What you get is what you get... (Was: Cannot reset default apps)
In article ,
Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Then you should not be trying to use W10, the joke OS. Seriously, this is what W10 is. If you're not the kind of guy who is "in the mood" to deal with it, then you need to look elsewhere. The more I see and hear of W10, the more I think it has become like Linux. That is, all the bad parts of Linux (*), with none of the good parts. I.e., it obviously, has none of the power and flexibility that makes Linux so wnoderful (once you get used to it), but it has all the "What you get is what you get" aspects. I've never been a big fan of MS products, but Windows did used to have a soul - that is, an actual concern that it be usable - that is, a sense that we're in this together and we want you to enjoy using it. That is, it was never great - from a power user POV - but it was crafted with care to be usable. That is now gone. (*) As mentioned, the "freeware mentality" - which is to say, the "What you get is what you get" mentality. -- "The most unsettling aspect of my atheism for Christians is when they realize that their Bible has no power to make me wince. They are used to using it like a cattle prod to get people to cower into compliance." - Author unknown |
#8
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Cannot reset default apps
On 11/9/19 9:36 PM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI.* Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix Thanks, but that didn't work. :-( I did get a message about chaning the settings of some policy, but sadly I can't remember the name of the policy to set it back. After changing the policy in the Powershell window, some message in red text displayed for about a quarter of a second, and the window closed. No idea what it said. -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#9
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Cannot reset default apps
On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that Github item. https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral Fix #1 didn't work, although the class was not registered. I just love articles like this that end the instructions to reboot and all is well. And then... It's not. Fix #2 does not apply, AFAIK, as I haven't had any issue with Explorer/Edge. From the comments, it sounds like the solutions didn't work for a lot of people. Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode". FWIW, tablet mode is off. This is a refurbished unit that came with W7 Pro. I used the Media Creation Tool, and did a fresh install, not an upgrade. It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device, has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for a tablet mode of operation. No touchscreen. What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration to continue to be screwed up. https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode ******* There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first", and see if it recognizes the problem. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10 So, I run the troubleshooter as shown in the article. I get part way through, and the troubleshooter wants me to sign in with an MS account. It doesn't tell you what you are signing into. I don't want MS to have any more access to my computer than needed, so I set things up for local accounts. So, I went past this step, and at the end, there were a couple of things it couldn't fix. After thinking on the situation for awhile, I wondered if simply signing in to the MS Store would make any difference in the trouble shooter. So I signed in, and there were 11 app updates available. Say what?!?!?! Why aren't these MS apps updated with the regular update system? Well, while I'm in the store, may as well update the programs. After that finished, I figured I also may as well reboot. Logged into one account after rebooting, the word "Welome" displayed for longer than it had in the past. But now, I can change those W#$^&#^&W# default apps. Who'd a thunk it? What I don't know is, did Fix #1 above have any effect here? So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps be automatically updated? -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#10
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Cannot reset default apps
On 11/10/19 1:06 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Windows 10 - Open the Windows 10 Feedback Hub from the Start menu, or enter “Feedback Hub” into the search field in the taskbar. - Click “Report a Bug”. - Follow the instructions to send in your issue. If users don't report bugs to Microsoft (connect.microsoft.com stopped functioning back in Jan 2018), Microsoft won't know about them. Hoping wherever else you cite a bug has people there that know people at Microsoft that can open a bug ticket doesn't work well, or not at all. I did this, although it's not a standard practice for me. I don't regularly use Windows Anything, preferring my Mac which is far less of a problem. TwinUI = Tablet Windows User Interface It's a library (of functions). While there are many copies of twinui.dll found in various folders, the copies of importance are at: C:\Windows\System32\twinui.dll C:\Windows\SysWOW64\twinui.dll Looks to be an app launcher. This kind of makes sense to me. When I would insert a CD or DVD into the optical drive, W10 gave me the notification of "What do you want to do...", When I clicked on the notification, one of the options was to run starterfile.html or something like that. Which did not seem to run, but I may have given up on that too soon. I found out about Microsoft's app launchers by accident. While you might set a web browser to be the default one, Windows actually uses "Internet Browser" to decide. Somehow when presented with the choice of what to make the default web browser (which was a popup, as I recall), I didn't know what the hell was "Internet Browser". Sounded like some knockoff variant, like Comodo's Dragon, or one of the numerous variants of Edge, IE, Chrome, or Firefox. So, of course, I picked Chrome (that was what I was using at the time). What happened thereafter when I double-clicked on a .url shortcut was that Chrome would load but instead of rendering the retrieved web page would show it as code, like a text editor. Go to the Defaults Apps wizard, scroll to the bottom, and click on "Choose default apps by file type". Scroll all the way down to the .url filetype. You'll see "Internet Browser" is the handler for the .url filetype. Since it got changed to Chrome (which would display the content of a web page instead of render it), I had to change this filetype association back to Internet Browser. Apparently the Internet Browser is used to decide which default web client into which the .url gets passed as an argument. It's like a front switchboard directing the URL string to whichever is the currently defined default web browser. Without this, the .url string doesn't get passed as a hyperlink, but instead the web browser is told to display the web page at that URL (rather than render it). You can, for example, open .txt files in a web browser to view them there instead of, say, Notepad. I'm glad that I tried double-clicking on a .url shortcut soon after the prompt asking which web browser to make the default, so I remembered about making that choice (and not knowing what the **** was "Internet Browser", which I probably saw as "Internet Explorer"). If you run "assoc .url" in a command shell, you'll see that filetype is associated with InternetShortcut, not with the executable file (for a web browser). https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/what-is-twinui.html Looks like TWinUI is similar, acting as a frontend to decide how to launch an app. That it shows as a default app means there is no longer a default shown. Users report that they cannot change the default app by going into the Default Apps wizard. Precisely what was happening here. What I didn't mention in my reply to Paul, was that the wizard would crash during the process. However, I suspect they don't scroll all the way down to the bottom to look at the other methods of defining default apps by filetype or by protocol. Even if they do, after clicking on the options they'll see a list that will just bedazzle and confuse them, and they'll just back out. I think most users just want to pick a program and have it work in all appropriate cases. That's what I discovered was needed to get back to using Internet Browser as the default handler for .url filetypes (to get the selected web browser to render the document) instead of pointing at a web browser's executable file (which merely loaded the document in the web browser, like using Notepad to view the source of a web page). See if the following works: - In the taskbar's searchbox, enter "default apps". - Open the Default Apps wizard. - Choose default apps by filetype. - Scroll down until you find the filetype (e.g., jpg, url, doc) to which you want to assign a handler (the default app). - Click on the current choice for a handler (or "Choose a default"), and pick the handler you want for that filetype from the popup list. Only apps that have previously registered themselves for what filetypes they can handle will be listed. If you've read my reply to Paul, updating the Store has seemingly solved the issue. Alternatively, you were likely trying to open a file or whatever a shortcut was pointing at when you double-clicked on it. Instead, right-click on the file (in File Explorer) and, from the context menu, choose "Open with" and then specify the executable file for the handler in which you want to load that file. If the Open With context menu entry doesn't show your handler in its recent list, you'll have to browse to the handler (used to be called Browse, now called Choose Another App). Open With worked, but contrary to one internet link I followed, I still could not make that the default program. That the default apps got set to TwinUI likely means some registry corruption regarding the filetype associations, or you selected something you shouldn't in a popup prompt asking you to select a default, or you used a tweaker (that caused the corruption), or by malware. I made the association mistake for one filetype (.url). If all default apps are pointing to TwinUI, that wouldn't be from you making a selection for one filetype. TwinUI shows up when the filetype or protocol associations somehow got screwed up, so Windows points to the app launcher. If it is, or now was, some type of registry corruption, it was done at the time W10 was installed. One suggestion is to restore the registry from before the corruption happened, but users may not know about the corruption until long after it occurred, and most don't schedule periodic backups of their registry. If you schedule periodic image backups of the file system, you can use those for a recovery, as they should include the registry files. Alas, most users don't do backups at all, plus restoring to a backup image means losing all wanted changes created after that backup. "No backups at all." That is so true. snip -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#11
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Cannot reset default apps
Ken Springer wrote:
On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote: Jonathan N. Little wrote: Ken Springer wrote: Installed W10 on a Lenovo laptop, version 1903. Unfortunately, many of the default apps are set to something called TWINUI. Obviously, that's wrong. I found some older web articles about this, but nothing very recent. Surely there's a solution for this BS from MS. As you can tell, I am ****ed about this kind of crap, and just not in the mood to deal with it. Maybe? https://github.com/WillBixler/TwinUI-Fix This (manual fix) seems to align with the script on that Github item. https://social.technet.microsoft.com...10itprogeneral Fix #1 didn't work, although the class was not registered. I just love articles like this that end the instructions to reboot and all is well. And then... It's not. Fix #2 does not apply, AFAIK, as I haven't had any issue with Explorer/Edge. From the comments, it sounds like the solutions didn't work for a lot of people. Someone mentions that this "feature" may belong to "tablet mode". FWIW, tablet mode is off. This is a refurbished unit that came with W7 Pro. I used the Media Creation Tool, and did a fresh install, not an upgrade. It's possible the Lenovo laptop is a dual-feature device, has a touchscreen, and this makes it a candidate for a tablet mode of operation. No touchscreen. What I'm fishing around for, is whether some part of the platform, is going to give a "hint" causing the registration to continue to be screwed up. https://www.pcmag.com/news/352305/ho...in-tablet-mode ******* There's an Apps troubleshooter in the Troubleshooter in Control Panels. You could "get the opinion of the Troubleshooter first", and see if it recognizes the problem. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-r...ter-windows-10 So, I run the troubleshooter as shown in the article. I get part way through, and the troubleshooter wants me to sign in with an MS account. It doesn't tell you what you are signing into. I don't want MS to have any more access to my computer than needed, so I set things up for local accounts. So, I went past this step, and at the end, there were a couple of things it couldn't fix. After thinking on the situation for awhile, I wondered if simply signing in to the MS Store would make any difference in the trouble shooter. So I signed in, and there were 11 app updates available. Say what?!?!?! Why aren't these MS apps updated with the regular update system? Well, while I'm in the store, may as well update the programs. After that finished, I figured I also may as well reboot. Logged into one account after rebooting, the word "Welome" displayed for longer than it had in the past. But now, I can change those W#$^&#^&W# default apps. Who'd a thunk it? What I don't know is, did Fix #1 above have any effect here? So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps be automatically updated? With regard to your last sentence, yes they would. It seems hard to believe the account would prevent Fix #1 from finishing, but perhaps re-downloading the App in that script, is part of the fix. You would think a dialog would pop up if it needed authentication. On the Insider, I have one Insider install where it would say stuff like "there is a problem with your account", and what it really meant was "I'd like you to authenticate now please", as that's all it would take to make it shut up. Paul |
#12
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Cannot reset default apps
On 11/10/19 9:12 AM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote: On 11/9/19 10:53 PM, Paul wrote: Jonathan N. Little wrote: Ken Springer wrote: snip) So, now I wonder, if the user account is an MS account, would the apps be automatically updated? With regard to your last sentence, yes they would. Sounds like a very sneaky way to force you to use an MS account for your login. Personally, not impressed with MS's ethics, here, but it is MS. snip -- Ken MacOS 10.14.6 Firefox 69.0.2 Thunderbird 60.9 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
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