What to do if my PC won't launch exe files?

[Large Marge]

My computer is fucked. I can get onto Firefox, but that's it. I just bought a hard drive to try and back it up and start over but I can't even launch the NT Backup application or load my anti-virus, or even download Explorer. Every time I try to launch an executable file, it asks me which program to use. Can anyone help me? My old antivirus ran out today so I need to do something ASAP!

Cheers!

[bouche]

whoa. do you have the regular program icons on your desktop or just "windows flag" icons? Sounds like your registry got pooched a bit. I've seen fixes for something similar to this.

Here is another

what version of windows is this?

[Large Marge]

Windows XP. I can get the MS Office aps to load, but only if I launch a file from my documents, not if I click the icon.

[larry_llama]

May I offer the following?

[bouche]

did you check the links that I posted? You clearly have a registry problem and you're going to need to follow the steps to fix the problem.

for example, if you download the fix for exe associations you should only need to unzip it and double-click on the .reg file. Hopefully .reg files will be recognized by windows and then reconfigure your association.

Edited December 5, 2009 by Guest

[Large Marge]

I got the exe file type added and was able to load my antivirus. Thanks! Now I'm going to back up everything and reload XP. If that doesn't fix it all, then I'll go back and try some of these other fixes. I knew i could count on you guys to know all this nerdy stuff