Hi everyone......I'm back !!! Still hanging on to my Windows 7 Pro computer but I don't believe that is the issue. I bought a new Western Digital 4tb USB external drive and they have a method to password protect that drive and it involves downloading the files needed to do so. When I attempt to download the info, it downloads it using my VLC media player. The reason it uses the VLC player is that it is set in the control panel as the default for everything it can open, however, it may think it can open the download but it can't. So I went into the control panel and attempted to remove all the extensions that were not audio or video and there was one particular extension that I think may be the problem and that is the .zip extension. There are several other suspect extensions and so the control panel said to remove the extensions I don't want. So I tried to remove them but no luck in doing so. There is a check box in front of each of the extensions and they are all grey and all checked and I cannot find a way to uncheck the boxes. Any help you can give me with this will be much appreciated.

See if you can follow the instructions from VLC Media Player's support article to change the file associations from within VLC Player:
https://www.vlchelp.com/change-file-associations-vlc-media-player/#:~:text=How%20to%20Change%20File%20Associations%20in%20VLC%201,all%20those%20listed%20media%20file%20types.%20See%20More.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

LOL! I swear that you come up with the oddest issues... just teasing.

I really don't know the answer off the top of my head but, if Steve's link fails to help, the first step I'd take as to troubleshooting would be to uninstall VLC and see what happens. VLC can be reinstalled later.

A few questions...
1) What is the file extension of the down load such as .zip, .rar, etc.?
2) Has there been a recent update to VLC?
3) Does the download actually happen but can't open due to being associated with VLC? If so right click on the download and select 'open with' and then select explorer or a third party compression utility that you may have such as 7-zip. If this works do again but check the box to always use.

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Jay, Allyson's avatar has always reminded me of a geek sitting in the corner just watching and listening, waiting to pounce with a curve ball!
@Allyson, i say that with the utmost of respect

I don't know about later builds of Windows but i'm running Window 7 and have VLC installed, within the VLC "File extensions association" setting there are options to enable or disable .zip and .rar extensions where VLC will override Windows and try to open them... quite why VLC thinks it should have control over compressed files i have no idea but it's probably a legacy thing VLC should have removed a long time ago.

VLC aren't the only culprate of this, for example, Winamp and to an extent Windows Media Player used to do the same thing, they caused me all sorts of issues before i realised that selecting "Select All" during installation/setup of these media players was not a good idea.

Step 3 of Jay's suggestion should work without the need to uninstall and reinstall VLC but if after a reboot it doesn't, then go into the VLC settings that Steve pointed you at and deselect .zip from the list (remember to save the setting before exiting the VLC options menu) and try Jay's Step 3 suggestion again.

The Windows 7 default is to open zip files with Windows Explorer.

Hope that helps.

Oh hang on, think i might have found the issue.

Just had a deeper look at this and while i still think Jay's step 3 will work i tried to make the change Allyson suggested and the boxes are in fact greyed out in VLC and Control Panel > Default programs> Set your default programs

But by selecting Control Panel > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program
I could then change the association within Windows 7 by highlighting the .zip extension then by using the "Change program..." button at the top of the window, change it to Windows Explorer.

What was very interesting was that the control panel window automatically refreshed and the .zip extension had been completely removed from the list in 'Associate a file type or protocol with a specific program' within control panel... and the .zip file extension box within VLC was now clear and no longer greyed out.

That is, it defaulted back to Windows Explorer as the default program for zip files after that change so should almost certainly work for Allyson.

As an aside which will probably make some of you laugh, i just clicked on a wrong button and it appears i've just set VLC as the default for everything that Allyson did... damn!... Hopefully a system restore will reset my pc... if not my context menu is going to be busy for a while LOL

Phew, quick system restore and my file associations are back... i just had to reinstall the latest release of Macrium and VLC that i updated earlier today

To answer your questions:
1) I do not know the extension of the download and working with WD to try and find out
2) There has been a recent update to VLC but I have not downloaded it as VLC is working great for what it is supposed to do.
3) The download does not actually happen and when I right click, it does open a lot of options but none of them are "Open With". All of the options it gives deal with audio or video.

I went on to replace VLC with the Windows Media Player and then I was able to download the file and that's when the real fun started as the only option there was to Uninstall the program. I am now in contact with the WD to see if they can help me get the drive password protected. Thanks for all your input.

Good luck. I hope WD turns out helpful.

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