Disable windows picture previewer

[Ravsitar]

How can I turn off the stupid "windows picture and fax viewer"? I would like to have my image files open with paintshop pro. I have set the associations in paintshoppro to handle images (bmp, jpg, etc) and they show the paintshop pro icons, and they will open with paintshop pro if I use the Open command. But how to I disable the preview junk? THanks.

[Ravsitar]

Never mind I found out how to do it. It requires editing the registry. You'd think that it would be more easily disabled. Oh well. Here's how to do it:

# Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
# Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ SystemFileAssociations\ image\ ShellEx\ ContextMenuHandlers.
# Delete the ShellImagePreview key.
# Close the Registry Editor when you're done; the change will take effect immediately.