The Mystery of Association C64 File Type in Vista

What I wanted to do today was to be able to double click on a C64 disk/tape image and launch the VICE emulator automatically.

As my common practice, I used the "Open with" in the context menu of Windows Exporer:

Then I browsed for the program x64.exe under my VICE directory:

The browse window closed and I returned to the list of the selected programs. What I noticed the program I have just selected did not appear in the list which also means the file association failed without any error message.

Then the mystery started. I tried with different VICE versions and association with different programs, log off,reboot and much more...

To make the story short, in order to make that work you have to rename x64.exe to something else, e.g. x64_start.exe. Voila!

After that you don't even need to browse the program. It's in the list ready to be picked.

I also found out if you use x64 %1 in a batch file you can drag-and-drop the image file in the batch file to run. But when you try to associate the batch file Vista will tell you:

'x64' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.

This must be one of those fantastica security features a la Vista.