Need to remove a bad file association.

[dar...@example.none]

For some reason, VLC adopted the .BIN type file and associated itself
with that extension. Those BIN files are system files and should not be
associated with VLC. Since Win98 has several BIN files, I need to
unassociate that ext. How do I do it?

Clicking on one of them caused a system crash....
And I rarely have any crashes with Win98.

I wonder why VLC did that anyhow? Stupid program I suppose. And I cant
find anywhere in the VLC settings to fix it, so I have to do it
externally from the program.

Thanks

[Lee]

A lot of programs assume you want them to be the boss of the outfit so they take over associations in a similar manner - MS being the author of some of the worst in that regard, but I will agree VLC is quite aggressive there.

First you have to decide what association you want for .bin files and then make it so. Or you can just delete the entire key(s) and leave the file type unassociated at which point if you double click on one again you will get the Open With dialog box indicating Windows doesn't know what to open it with and you can choose then or not choose at all by canceling out.

Start in the registry under this key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.bin]
@="VLC.bin"

Note mine clearly points to the evil VLC beast as well - I can live with it.

So then under the same Classes we look for VLC.bin text. I find it here

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin]
@="VLC media file (.bin)"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\DefaultIcon]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe\",0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell]
@="Open"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\AddToPlaylistVLC]
@="Add to VLC media player's Playlist"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\AddToPlaylistVLC\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe\" --started-from-file --playlist-enqueue \"%1\""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\Open]
@="Play"
"MultiSelectModel"="Player"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe\" --started-from-file \"%1\""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\PlayWithVLC]
@="Play with VLC media player"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin\shell\PlayWithVLC\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe\" --started-from-file --no-playlist-enqueue \"%1\""

It would be best to delete both the .bin key and the VLC.bin key entirely if you want .bin to be unassociated. The following text snippet if saved to notepad as a .reg file could be double clicked and merged to reverse VLC in the future too.
start copy and paste to notepad between dashed lines, do not include dashed lines.
-------------------
REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.bin]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin]

-------------------
Include at least one blank line under the entry [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VLC.bin] line as .reg files are reported to require one blank line ending the .reg file.

And you can expect VLC to re-steal the association at any time. As they say, thanks for playing.

In order for the change to take effect immediately upon merging the above reg file you should click the Start button and bring up the Shutdown Windows dialog box and then just cancel out of it. This box, when it appears, re-writes pending registry changes for real and often only then does it actually work. It should work on reboot if this shortcut cheat fails to turn loose of the .bin file association right away. And of course once VLC runs it will want to re-write the registry to it's own liking again. Just the nature of the beast.

It's a battle I've fought and won only sometimes, but I tend to ignore trivial pursuits in my latter years. I right click the .bin file and Send To whatever app I need it opened with, so in normal operations I would never double click on a bin file anyway.