title: Side-by-side Visual Studio installations and file associations
body: <p>I have been working with VS10 for years and yesterday I have installed VS12 side-by-side with the old one. Now I noticed that some file associations are inconsistent. Projects are opened by the version selector, C++ files by VS10 and FSX files with VS12 and more of this mess is around. Everything is a bit random and I wanted to map everything to VS12 while still having VS10 installed as I use XNA and you know that VS12 has no official support for XNA yet.</p>
  
  <p>Searching SO revealed I only have to go to Options > General > Restore File Associations, but it is called now Manage File Associations and the control panel is being opened and lets me choose for every available format of VS which one I want:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/KUe8Y.png" alt="Control Panel File Associations"></p>
  
  <p>I could select the check box to select all available formats but... I dislike this idea, because it could probably break something.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Has anyone good advice whether my doubts are wrong - yet how should I manage the associations without breaking anything?</strong></p>