Any way to force a file to 'open with'?

[Van Hellseek]

I have a shortcut to the windows hosts file on my desktop, but every time I open it I get a box pop up and ask what I want to open it with.

For some reason I can't select 'always use the selected program to open this kind of file'. The check-box is greyed-out.

How do I make it so that it opens with wordpad every time?

(win xp pro sp3 btw)

 

[Frapple]

has it got an extension?

 

[the_running_man]

has it got an extension?

Was just about to say that the hosts file has no extension and that's probably why you can't select a default app to open with.

 

[rpstewart]

Can you not make a shortcut to wordpad on the desktop and pass the hosts file in as a parameter? I've just tried it using notepad, set the shortcut target to:

%windir%\system32\notepad.exe c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

 

[Van Hellseek]

How do I change that for wordpad?

I changed notepad.exe to wordpad.exe, but it didn't work.

 

[Masterdog]

Wordpad's executable is 'write.exe'

 

[Van Hellseek]

Ok, thanks. That will make life a bit easier.