I'm here on behalf of my friend who is having some computer problems. He's using Windows 2000, and everything he tries to open opens up a picture viewer. He can't open his control panel or anything; it just launches the picture viewer. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

He has a VIRUS. . . . The exe files have been reasigned by the virus. and Control Panel disabled . . . I bet his anti virus doesn't work either! Try a scanner you can pop on a floppy B U T change the extention from .exe to .com as you already know what happens when .exe files are run! ! ! A good one is McAfee Stinger. Get it from here -> http://download.nai.com/products/mcafee-avert/stinger.exe BUT REMEMBER to rename it Stinger.com. Good Luck . . . :o)

Hi, thanks for replying. He ran the stinger thing and nothing changed. Does that mean it isn't a virus? Someone else informed me that he may have a corrupt registry, but I couldn't find any info on how to repair it. Any ideas? Thanks.

Hi, well something has certainly messed up the registry. There will be registry back ups on the system and currently I don't know how you can access them to go back to a better working version (I do for Win95, Win98, WinMe though!). . . I would suspect that it will be a matter of booting with the Win2K CD and running a repair. I will have a look for info and post again - or someone will beat me to it ! ! Hang Tight! . . . :o)