Customer (English is not her first language… hence I have some difficulty communicating) has a vista laptop, and needs me to setup her printer and fix a problem with viewing pdf documents.

The printer is simple enough: she had already installed the printer drivers from the CD, installed the toner cartridge, but it kept putting out blank pages.

A closer look at the toner cartridge showed that she hadn’t removed the toner seal (no toner = blank page).

The pdf documents was a bit trickier.

I find I can start adobe reader, and file -> open shows me some pdf documents, and I can load and view a document no problems.

So she explains about double clicking the document… ok… I use explorer to navigate to a pdf document, double click on it, and office 2007 word tries (and fails) to display the document.

I figure: word has somehow decided to become the default application for opening pdf documents.

Simple enough: I just go into adobe reader, and under preferences, I should be able to tell it to take over the pdf association again…

I spend the next 5 minutes scouring the adobe reader menus and preferences, but there is no way to set the default pdf association… hmmm.

I eventually find that using windows explorer is the best bet: folder options -> file types -> Click on the pdf extension, and use the change button to pick the correct application.

I run a few tests, to make sure the association isn’t changed back.