Question

I created a custom paint program , it is really good and better than the Microsoft Paint , now i am on stage two of the program , where i want to replace the old mspaint.exe where located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\mspaint.exe with my custom paint application , i tried to do that by typing the command :

System.IO.File.Copy(@"mspaint.exe", "C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\mspaint.exe", true);

And that was not successful , i just tried to make my custom application is the default paint program , but once i do that , the old mspaint keep comming back !!

EDIT : I am trying to do that in windows XP

EDIT 2 : i made a regestry key : LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\mspaint.exe and made a string value of name : debugger and added string : C:\windows\system32\mypaint.exe and whenever i try to open any image i get error message :

Unable to find a version of the runtime to run this application

and my custom program does not open.

Answer 1

Perhaps you can use image file execution options registry to forward calls of mspaint.exe to your exe.

In order to so:

1. Ceate a new registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\currentversion\image file execution options
2. Name it with mspaint.exe
3. Add a string value named debugger and set its value to your exe file