Opening files with default Windows application from within emacs

Question

I\'m trying to tweak the dired-find-file function in emacs on Windows XP so that when I open (say) a pdf file from dired it fires up a copy of Acrobat Reader and op

Answer 1

I have this in my .emacs:

(setq dired-guess-shell-alist-user
  (list
    (list "\\.*$" "cmd /k")
  ))

This will open the file using cmd.exe which will use whatever program is associated with the file extension. Tested to work on Windows 8 and GNU Emacs 24.2.1.