Lost file associations (Not the old version issue) Win 7 & CS5

Question

Something corrupted my installation of CS5 a month or so ago after it had been working correctly and I lost all the image file associations. Photoshop worked fine but only if I directly opened files from within.  Also all the other image packages were missing from the file association list in the Windows 7 file associations tool, not just Photoshop.   Using the Windows tool to find the programmes dot exe file and create an association also locked up at the select the right package phase.
I have fixed this now and my reason for posting is that several previously suggested fixes in both the MS Windows fora and elsewhere on these Adobe forums were either very complicated requiring direct registry editing or didn't work.  It has taken me a while to find a work-around that worked, hence this post.
1) Firstly - as is stated elesewhere the obvious answer of simply reinstalling Photoshop over the existing copy doesn't work!  Unfortunately it was a while before I found this out, with several time wasting retries of this as a fix attempt.
2) Not saying this is guaranteed to work in every case but I ran a 3rd party free Registry Cleaner tool, this appears to have fixed the bug in the registry allowing the Windows 7 File Associations tool to work properly again.  Once that was fixed linking up each graphic type was simple.
Reason for posting is I wasted lots of time thinking the issue must have been a legacy from my earlier instal of a trial version of Master Suite or the older Photoshop 7 being replaced even though my CS5 edition had been working Ok for some time. because this is what is given as the usual cause.  However I think in my case it was after loading and then deleting other graphics software, possibly Real Player, which had grabbed the associations and corruped registry settings somehow at uninstall.  It appears registry cleaner restored the corruption and allowed the standard Win 7 tool to work again.
Hope this can help someone else.

Answer 1

First, let me say thanks to John for posting his experience here.  I think that Adobe does a poor job of managing file associations, given that we do hear of a lot of folks who see them get fouled up due to doing normal things like uninstalling earlier versions.
I'd like to ask, though:  Did you try using the Preferences - File Type Associations dialog in Bridge?
Curt Y wrote:
Not being a computer "geek" myself I personally can not say it is a bad thing to try
A comment on "registry cleaners" in general:
I am a career computer "geek", and yes, Curt's right:  Registry cleaners in general are a terrible idea.  There are a few that encompass some valuable functionality such as deletion of old files from TEMP folders, but that's something one can do on one's own as well.
It's simply impossible for the programmer of a piece of software to know what information can be safely deleted from YOUR file system or YOUR Windows registry, which is a database. 
Nor is it necessary to "clean" a registry regularly, as some say, to keep a system working well.  That's hype, propagated by the registry cleaner makers.  I use a system every day that's on the same installation of Windows 7 that first went in at the end of 2009.  It's stable and fast as ever.  I've even done several hardware upgrades and restored the same OS setup using system image backups just to keep the same fully configured, perfectly working system.
Ever hear people claim they have to reinstall Windows every so often?  One of the reasons could well be that they've used a registry cleaner.
-Noel