"Open With ->" yeilds multiple entries for everything???

[TheMac19]

For some time now if I right click on something and choose "open with" it shows a long list with everything in triplicate.

I think it may have something to do with me beginning to use a external hard drive for backup purposes. I do not keep the drive plugged into my pb, but just connect it once every couple weeks to do a complete backup with SuperDuper.

Is ther any way to fix this "Open With" Menu? I would maybe understand two entries for all the programs if my external drive was connected, since there would be copies of all those applications, but this happens all the time, even without the external HD.

Running a 15" powerbook, with Tiger. This has been the same for me with all generations of Tiger..

Any help would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
-tom

 

[Apple]

I dont remember the program but I downloaded one once that made an alias of all my apps and put them into a folder. This also made my "open with" contextual menu go crazy like that except they were only duplicates. I just ended up deleting that one folder with the app aliases

 

[stoid]

Yes, I have had the same problems. It occurred when I upgraded my internal drive, I cloned the old drive to my external, and cloned back to the new drive, and presto multiple apps.

I've even done a Spotlight search on the app name, and only gotten one copy showing up there. It doesn't make a difference which item I select in the contextual menu, it still opens the one copy of the app.

 

[mad jew]

It could be a corrupt Launch Services data file. Try deleting your com.apple.LaunchServices.plist preference file and if that doesn't work then delete com.apple.LaunchServices-XXX.csstore which is in your cache folder on your hard drive (not the Home folder). I think there'll probably be two of them, delete both/all. Once you've done this you'll probably get a security warning each time you open up an app for the first time assuming you're completely up to date. Just say yes to it. 🙂

Hope this works.

By the way, Cocktail can rebuild the Launch Services database for you if you have it and don't want to go around deleting files manually. 🙂