Open Office v M$ Office?

[nihil]

I have noticed some strange behaviour on this machine since the last "patch Tuesday".

I have Open Office 2.3 as my default and MS Office 97 lurking around somewhere.

Since patch Tuesday I have been getting regular warnings from one of my security applications that the default associations for .doc .rtf and .xls extensions has been changed from Open Office to M$ Office. Naturally I deny this change, but something keeps trying.

Incidentally, the access paths are genuine.

Any ideas folks?

[foxyloxley]

I had the other fault, where open office was trying to set itself as default 'opener'
used CrapCleaner tools to see the startup list, and deleted the open office entries, as I use th eopen office as and when, but I use MS Office 2003, because that is what I support, and that is what I need to be available.

maybe check your startup list, as it maybe that M$ added a tweak to their office apps

[nihil]

Hi foxy~

I have checked the startup list, but the only entry is for Open Office. MS Office has no icon, and doesn't even get into the programs list. I have to go manually into the program files folder to open it. Like I said it is Office 97 and I only have it for support purposes, as quite a few people still use it

By the way, the OS is Windows 2000SP4

[nihil]

I think that I have found the problem.

The tool that was warning me that something was trying to change my file associations is "WinPatrol" from Bill P Studios. It is a product I have used for at least 8 years.

http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html

It works with Windows (including Vista). There is a free version and a paid for one, but I have only used the free edition (yeah, I am cheap like that )

If you visit the site you will see a screenshot of the toolbar. I opened the "file types" section and found that .rtf files were associated with MS Wordpad. I don't know how that might have happened as I certainly didn't do it.

The other two files were associated with Open Office.

Couldn't find where to change it in O-O, so I just deleted all O-O and reinstalled the latest version (2.3.1) which I had downloaded a while back and been meaning to do.

At the prompt, I associated the file types with O-O. WinPatrol then warned me that something was trying to change the file association for .rtf files, so I gave it the OK.

I have no idea how these conflicting instructions could have come about, but everything seems to be fine now.

[foxyloxley]

I have no idea how these conflicting instructions could have come about,

hmmmmmm
lets think about that shall we

[nihil]

I forgot to mention it, but these warnings were coming up regularly at 10~12 minute intervals. Almost as if there was some background process running trying to synchronise things.

I looked in Process Manager, but didn't see anything obvious