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  • No, there is no way to turn off this security fix. Seriously, if you have apps that didn't use fully qualified paths for their explorer verbs then they deserve to be broken by this change. Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 17:56
  • @Petesh, first of all, who said anything about apps? I have created registry patches of my own so that I can open different files and perform different tasks. Using FQPs is not always feasible because the location may change. You may like dumping everything in C:\Program Files, but not everybody does. Using the PATH makes sense because that is what it’s there for. Second, obviously Microsoft themselves realized this “security feature” was pointless because they removed it from Vista+; e.g., in Windows 7, like in SP1, the first one works ("@"="blah.exe"1, if blah.exe is in the path.
    – Synetech
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:07
  • if a virus can modify your system path variable: ...and your user path variable? Also, what about using the App Paths Reg Key?
    – afrazier
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:08
  • @Petesh, besides, many of the security patches in SP2 were to help novice users who don’t know a an infected file from their butts avoid getting in trouble. For those of us who know a little something about computers, most of these enhancements have been nothing but annoying headaches instead of helpful.
    – Synetech
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:09
  • if a virus can modify your system path variable: , @afrazier, obviously if it can modify the high-privilege system PATH variable, then it can modify the user one as well. I haven’t tried the App Paths; it might just do the trick. I’ll test it out the next time I’m in XP. (It is really annoying that there are a dozen or so places where things like this can be located.)
    – Synetech
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:12