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Double clicking on files that you don’t know in Windows is somewhat dangerous.The danger increases especially if the file makes some changes in the system registry which you had not intended at all.
One such file is the .reg file.By default,on double clicking it will merge all the changes it has in the system registry.What if it was a malicious registry change?
How do we know what it has before merging it?
One safe way to deal with this is change the associated action which is binded by default to the file.Let’s change the action so that whenever a .reg file is double clicked,it will open for editing and not merge anything.
To do this :
In Windows Explorer, choose Tools>Folder Options >File Types to open the File Types dialog box. Highlight the REG entry and click Advanced. Highlight the Edit action and click Set Default. The Edit action should turn bold. Click OK.
This will ensure that whenever a .reg file is double clicked,it will not merge the changes by default.The same can be done for any other file type using the File Types dialog box.
Hope it has been an informative post.
Peace.