i ran newsbin the other day and the program immediately froze for some reason before it could even load completely. so i forced it to shut down and ran it again but this time, all the settings were gone, not back to default, but just gone-didily-on. all the blanks were just that, blank. so then i tried to uninstall and reinstall the program but i get an error message saying, can't find such file (when i was actually double-clicking on it). so i restarted windows and now, none of the executable files would execute! the funny thing is though, when i double-click on a txt file, it still opens the notepad but when i double-click on the notepad.exe, i get the same error message. same thing happens with internet explorer. when i double click on the shortcut on the desktop, it still opens the browser but it won't if i click on the icon in the quick launch bar. also, i used to be able to access the system settings in the control panel just prior to the restart, but now i can't. it gives me the same error message. now, i'm hoping if i just format the c drive and reinstall windows xp, everything would be back to normal but my question is, what would cause such problem? is my 3-year-old maxtor 40g hard drive failing already? or is it the power outage in my area on that faithful day that might have abruptly shut my pc down. (i say "might have" because i don't know whether my pc was turned on or not.) any ideas? thanks. weirder yet, as i just copy this whole message and paste it on the notepad, i notice that the menus are in dutch! what the devil is going on?

open my computer. then click on tools then folder options then file types. then click new. enter ".exe" then click advanced. then choose "application" then ok. that should do it.

This fix may solve the .exe problem compliments of Tom41. Go here: http://www.dougknox.com/ In the left column click on WinXP fixes, then in the main window click on file association fixes. Download and run the .exe file association fix. HTH Tufenuf

After you have done what Tufenuf said run a virus scan from here. http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

thanks, guys! the winxp-fixes from dougknox.com really did the trick and the housecall virus scan removed the bugs! or so i thought... the error messages came back, i ran the fix again, it seemed to work again, then the error messages came back again. so i tried to reproduce the problem and lo and behold, the root of the devil was the notepad! even after the exe fix and the virus scan, the menus on the notepad were still in dutch. i didn't know if that had anything to do with it but it certainly indicated something was still wrong because everytime i open the notepad, the problem would reoccur. and it went undetected twice by the virus scan. so i opened the windows folder and what i saw was two notepad executables: notepad32.exe and notepad.exe notepad32 was in dutch notepad was not. what's peculiar is that if i double-click on the notepad32, the exe's are ok but if i double-click on a txt file which then opens notepad32, the exe's go missing. is this the latest virus current antivirus programs haven't yet caught up with?

msfinger, It sure looks like a virus. I did a search for notepad32.exe and couldn't find anything. I wonder what would happen if you'd rename notepad32.exe to notepad32.old. Just a thought. Tufenuf

i tried deleting the notepad32.exe, tried restarting the computer, tried re-associating the txt file to notepad.exe, tried deleting the txt file type and making a new txt file type with notepad.exe associated with it but still, txt files would open in the dutch notepad. i think i'm out of options now. i'll just format c drive and reinstall windows xp. thanks for your help though.