I've finally managed to disable the nightmare of file associations between Parallels and Windows and on the Mac it was relatively easy to get rid of all the Open With associations for Windows applications. The problem is, the Windows Registries in my Windows VMs are full of literally hundreds of the useless "Open With" entries created by Parallels without asking me or informing me.
Is there any quick way to get rid of all this crap or do you really have to go through the Registry manually and delete all the keys with the Open With entries referring to Mac applications? This wanton vandalism of my operating systems is really, really, really, really annoying! In fact, this whole feature is a total disaster -- nobody wants or needs file associations for everything between the VM and the host computer. At most you want associations for just a couple of things, and you want to set it up manually yourself.
Is there any quick way to get rid of all this crap or do you really have to go through the Registry manually and delete all the keys with the Open With entries referring to Mac applications? This wanton vandalism of my operating systems is really, really, really, really annoying! In fact, this whole feature is a total disaster -- nobody wants or needs file associations for everything between the VM and the host computer. At most you want associations for just a couple of things, and you want to set it up manually yourself.
The article you reference only describes how to remove the associations on OSX and that's not what it's about. The problem, described in detail in the first post above, are the hundreds of "Open with..." entries in the Windows Registry database that Parallels adds without ever asking users if they want them. What is needed is a quick and safe way of removing those -- editing the Windows Registry is always potentially risky and while you can find matching entries you can never be entirely sure whether deleting them will break something or not.