Unexpected Application Automatically Installs

You publish an application with a Group Policy object, and a user who is managed by the Group Policy object logs on. The user has never installed the published application, and when he or she double-clicks a document associated with the application, a different application than the expected one installs. For example, the user double-clicks a document with an .htm file name extension, expecting Microsoft® Word to open it, and instead, the Windows Installer installs Microsoft® FrontPage® and then opens the document.

Possible Causes:

You deployed multiple applications that want to own the file name extension but did not adjust the precedence of file name extensions in the Software Installation snap-in.

Diagnostic Tests:

Check to see that the precedence of the file name extensions for the Group Policy object with the Software Installation snap-in is set the way that you want it to work for users managed by the Group Policy object.

Note

Checking Event Viewer for the application log does not provide any useful information for this problem because the unexpected application installs correctly. It is not an installation error, but rather a case of correctly installing an unexpected application.