I could really use a bit of assistance. I have never run into this before and its driving me crazy figuring it out. I had to remove acrobat writer from a large amount of machines due to licensing issues but after removal the file association didn't go to reader. So when i set it back with assoc .pdf=AcroExch.Document ftype AcroExch.Document=(path) %1 I had a hard time getting the assoc .pdf=AcroExch.Document to take and found that when i type Assoc and hit enter it only goes down through the A's instead of all the way through all of the file extensions. I"ve tried running chkdsk but can't find anything online regarding repairing or replacing the assoc command Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure what's going on here. But you could try using RegEdit.exe and checking the file associations in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. It may not be convenient to use, but it could let you explore and find out what's going on.

well I actually meant to say that in my first message. All of the file associations are correct in regedit. I cannot see anything that would seem like corruption besides the problem with assoc not showing anything except .323-.apl and goes back to command prompt. I am clueless on what to do next. I've tried everything i can think of. Assoc isn't an executable that i can try copying a new one over is it?

No, ASSOC is built into CMD.exe. It sounds like there's some corruption somewhere. I just can't think where. Maybe you could have a very careful look in REGEDIT, to see what there is, just after the last entry shown by the ASSOC command. Maybe there's a badly formed registry entry there that confuses ASSOC and makes it stop.