.cab File Association Configuration

M. Gallant 10/22/2001

Win98 and Win2000 provides a native .cab file viewer using the cabview.dll library component. Some archiving applications change this default file-type association (e.g. WinZip). If the native win32 association is desired, there are a number of options:

If WinZip changed the file association, use the Options/Configuration/System Associations panel and remove the .cab association (which should cause reversion to the cabview.dll association).
Manually change the .cab file association yourself (if another program changed the file association) using the win32 registry editor (CAUTION):
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cab ----> CLSID\{0CD7A5C0-9F37-11CE-AE65-08002B2E1262}
Use the safer approach with the assoc.exe command, if available, instead of directly editing the registry:
assoc .cab=CLSID\{0CD7A5C0-9F37-11CE-AE65-08002B2E1262}
If you wish to keep the changed default file association, but also want the option to use the original win32 native cabview.dll approach from a right-click context menu, add a new action (call it View) associated with the .cab file extension as shown below:

[Note for Win2000+: Starting with Win2000, one can use per user class registration capability so that individual users can set their file associations (say for .cab files) without affecting the default associations that all other users experience. This capability is due to the "merged view" of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT whose value depends on settings of both HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes]

References