First off I hope I`m posting this in the correct forum. If not please accept my apologies.
Couple of quick questions.
I accidentally clicked the “Make Default” button under “Make this installation your default Blender” when browsing the Preferences and would like to undo that but there doesn`t seem to be any option to undo. Is there any way of undoing it?
No problem with it being set to default, just curious.
Also, I`ve set up my preferences for addons etc in Edit > Preferences and also saved my start up file.
Is there any way of keeping these files or backing this up for when I do a fresh W10 or install a new version of Blender so I don`t have to go through it all again?
In Blender, not without using some advance Python code to mess with your operating system’s settings, and that can be risky, especially if you don’t have any system backups in reserve. The easy alternative is to simply change the default application that you open your .blend files to the Blender application that you desire.
In case you don’t already know how to bring up the UI panel, go to any of your blend files and then do:
RMB → Show more options → Properties → Change
In Windows 10 you might not need to do Show more options, I forget. I’m on Windows 11. Additionally you can change your default file applications in your Windows Settings. I’m not going to show how, as both Windows 10 + 11 have different UI layouts.
If by files you mean the settings that are used to remember your chose of default applications, yes. Those are called Reg files. You can manually export those files as raw files via the Registry Editor, which is a native application that basically asks as a File Explorer, but specifically for Reg files. Then simply transfer them to your new operating system and re-import them and they should work fine, with the exception of changed file-paths of course.
You can open up the Registry Editor by going to and typing in: Windows + R → “regedit”.
In the opened folder, there should be 3 remaining sub folders, which various selections that you have made in the past. The files in those folders, as I mentioned above, can be exported, transferred and re-imported later on.
I dont really have any other application that will open .blend files and I dont think Ill mess with the Python code so I think Ill just have to leave it for now.
Its not really a problem. The main thing is making my installation the default has changed the thumbnails in W10 to a little image of the model/scene and I dont really like that. I like my .blend files to just be the Blender logo. Thats just what Im used to.
I like my view in W10 folders to be Large icons. I know this can be changed and when it is changed to say, List, it does just show a small Blender logo but as I say, I like the view to be Large icons so it`s just a little annoying.
Thanks for the info re the Reg files.
Just out of curiosity, how would you export then re-import those files?
I`ve never done this before and may not do it right now but it would be good to know.
