Preview pane not working with .php files

When you try to use preview pane in Windows Explorer to view .php files you might get the following message:

No preview available

This issue occurs when you don’t have installed any .php handler like Adobe Dreamweaver for instance.

To resolve this, we’ll need to do changes to Windows Registry.

Hit Win ORB (Start Menu) | Type: regedit | Navigate to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.php

Select the .php folder and in the right pane check if you have the following key:

PerceivedType REG_SZ text

If this key isn’t available, right click on the .php folder and click ‘New String Value’

Type: PerceivedType | Double click on the newly created key and modify it’s value to ‘text‘

Close the Registry Editor and see if you can preview .php files in Explorer now.

On my PC this is working by default, but on some PC’s, this action is required in order to get the preview working for .php files.

With these changes preview pane in Windows Explorer should work properly.