hi guys, I'm unable to open any exe, com, mpg, jpeg, doc, xls etc file on my computer. Below is a detailed description of what happened. I started computer as I always do after coming home from work. I was in a mood to clear some space on my computer by removing unused software. So from Add/Remove programs, I removed some programs. After that, I ran SpyBOT and removed some thing called "DSO explicit". After that, I was general browsing my computer. I was checking files on my computer and in my computer and all of a sudden, don't know what happened, I lost icons for all items on my desktop. It showed program_name.lnk for all my program shortcuts. Icons of my document files were gone. "My Computer" icon was there, but its name was changed to "folder". I clicked on "Start" button and "All Programs" and nothing was there. All items were gone. My recently used program list was gone. My recent documents list was empty. I could not even see "Run..." command under Start menu! when i try to remember what action did i take just before this happened, i recollect that i was just browsing my computer window. I was clicking the icons under "Other places" found on the left side of the my computer window. and if i remember correct, i click the network folder icon there. I don't know if that action is linked to or dependent on what happened.. Now I can open only .txt files. If I try to open exe file, it doesn't do anything, but simply disables its icon. If I tried to open file such as a word document, it opened window saying that could not find program. So I selected word from the list. It said something like "cannot open. Either you are in safe mode or windows installer could not find something... blah blah". After that, it does show icon for word and excel files, but when i double click them, looks like some small window pops up, but before i cud see anything, it disappears. When I double click the "folder" (originally my computer) icon on the desptop, a window opens and it shows that "torch" icon and searches for contents. after a while it shows all my drives. i can see all the data. it is there. but cannot open anything except txt file. i searched on google/computing.net. i found some similar problems, but none of the suggested solutions could fix my problem :( it would be great if anyone cud help me with this. i'm really frustrated after spending 3 hours on this. i got some fixwen.inf file. But when i right click and install it, it says program cannot be found. i went into safe mode command prompt, opened regedit.exe and checked exefiles/shell/open.. as suggested on one of the forums. But the setting there is correct. i don't know how this happend. i don't know if it's due to sysbot cleaning. i dont know if it's a virus. I dont think it was triggered immediately after it happened. im just too confused. any help wud be greatly appreciated..!!!! thanks a lot..

See if this thread helps i_XpUser

hi XpUser, Thanks for the prompt response.. I've already tried everything mentioned on that thread. I could not fix my computer even after trying everything suggested there. that's why im little more worried now.. i think it has something to do with the registry but i checked a few things in registry and they look fine (such as exefiles key etc). very confused :( please help. thanks..

Here is a fix for you. I just did the same thing hope you still need it. http://www.dougknox.com/ then goto File assoctation Fix goto EXE open the Zip and double click the .reg file. It will work. good luck. Bob