Macos – Remove associations with applications in VMWare Fusion

file associationmacososx-snow-leopardvmware-fusion

One of the "features" of VMWare Fusion is that it associates files on the Mac host with programs in the VM. Unfortunately I uninstalled VMWare Fusion, and my Mac still has applications in VMWare Fusion associated with it. How can I remove the associations? I went to the Genius Bar, but they didn't know how to fix it (they cleared my cache, but that didn't do it.)

I am running OSX Snow Leopard

Best Answer

You can try rebuilding your Launch Services Cache by running the following command in the Terminal:

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

The Launch Services Database is in charge of file/application associations.

Also, how did you uninstall VMWare Fusion - using the Uninstaller or just throwing away the application?

To use the Uninstaller (if you've just thrown away the application) you can run it either from the disk image you used to install VMWare (if you still have it) or open it from /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion. Once that is run it will remove all the helper tools VMWare uses to help integrate the virtual machines with the host operating system (in this case Mac OS X).

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