05-04-2009, 06:35 PM

This is my first post in this forum.
I have a 2 months old Macbook (leopard). I have a strange problem which I don't know how I can solve:
The macbook has some default applications to open different file formats, e.g. Preview for PDF files. I changed the default application to Skim (select, command+i, then change the "open with" option to skim.app and choose to change for all and then confirm). Now throughout the entire period I am logged in, all the PDF files open with Skim when I double click on the file, but if I reboot the default application falls back to Preview. I have the similar situation with the video files when I choose VLC over Quicktime player.

Following are the steps that I took after several hours of Googling:
1. Repaired disk permissions using Disk utility, changed the default applications (say, from Preview to Skim for PDFs) and Rebooted -- PDF files still open with Preview upon double click. Status: Did not work.

2. Rebuilt launch services using Onyx after changing the default applications. Rebooted -- no luck.

3. Trashed two launch service files with the names
/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices-xxxxxx.csstore,
changed default applications, and restarted. The default applications falls back to original and those deleted files were created automatically -- no luck again.

4. Changed permission of the /Users/kousik/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist file using CLI: (kousik is my user ID)

chmod u+rw /Users/kousik/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

(the owner of the file is kousik as revealed by ls -lah), changed default applications and then rebooted -- no luck.

5. Same as above (#4), except for the fact that I deleted the launch services files from /Library/Caches/ as well just like #3. After reboot, to my delight, I found that the default application for PDF files is Skim and not Preview! However, on double click it says that Skim is an application downloaded from the internet, etc, etc. .... the same crap when you use a new application for the first time. It was weird to me as I used Skim before. However, after another reboot, the default application for PDFs falls back to Preview.

I am running out of ideas. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

05-04-2009, 07:13 PM

How are you logged on? In other words, is the account you're logged onto an admin one? If it is, create a test account with admin rights and try to change the application opening default from the test account to see if it works. Post back.

Regards.

05-04-2009, 08:42 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

How are you logged on? In other words, is the account you're logged onto an admin one? If it is, create a test account with admin rights and try to change the application opening default from the test account to see if it works. Post back.

Regards.

Yes, "kousik" was the admin account which I was using earlier. Following your suggestion, I created another account with admin privilege, and voila --- it does not have this problem! But, I am still curious why this is happening in the first account?

05-07-2009, 04:10 AM

I had FileVault enabled for this account and that was the source of all problems. After disabling it, the changes to default applications are not falling back to the original ones anymore!

However, does anyone know how to get around the problem even when FileVault is on?

Thanks!