Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
3 Posts
0
5474
January 4th, 2005 03:00
Cannot run anything including Control Panel programs
Win XP home comes up just fine, sign on as one of several users, but all of the programs will not run...the short cuts end in LNK and nothing (including all windows programs like calculator and those in control panel) will run and you get a message say:
Windows cannot open this file:
File: chkdsk.exe
To oen this file, Windows needs to know what program created it. Windows can go online to look it up automatically, or you can manually select from a list of programs on your computer.
basically it looks like all file associations have been lost. I cannot download and install anything like spybot either.
Ideas or should I low level format the drive and reload the OS??
No Events found!
Midnight Star
4.8K Posts
0
January 4th, 2005 16:00
See if this might help:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm
Mike.
csddh
3 Posts
0
January 5th, 2005 03:00
I appreciate the response....I tried fixing the .exe and .reg association but after you download the program and it is unzipped, you cannot run it since the computer since it is asking for the program that created it (in other words, it doesn't even know how to execute the code)...I never get to a prompt to import.
I have several clues:
1)
csddh
3 Posts
0
January 5th, 2005 04:00
I appreciate the response....I tried fixing the .exe and .reg association but after you download the program and it is unzipped, you cannot run it since the computer since it is asking for the program that created it (in other words, it doesn't even know how to execute the code)...I never get to a prompt to import.
I have several clues:
1) I was finally able to get a web based (sysmantec) scan of the system and it found several viruses...trojan dropper, download_trojan, bloodhound.unknown, trojan horse...but of course it doesn't allow for the fix....This computer had Norton Antivirus 2005 on it so i'm not sure how they got on...furthermore, i'm unclear if any of these would couse this extent of damage.
2) Is it possible that the system was doing something like installing SP2 or some other patch, and it was rebooted? I see no reference to SP2 in the event logs but this was a thought.
I'm wondering if at this point the most prudent thing to do would be to low-level and reinstall. I've gotten to a dos prompt under XP repair from booting off the cd but i'm not sure if this will help me actually fix the situation.
Is there anything that can be done, since nothing other that IE works or will run, that will actually fix this system short of a reinstall?
Many thanks
Midnight Star
4.8K Posts
0
January 5th, 2005 16:00
csddh,
I'll leave that decision up to you, but if it was me, i'd try to get my personal data off, then reformat and reinstall. There's no telling what damage was done. A repair installation would recover the system files, but not necessarily repair any registry entry(s) that were corrupted or damaged.
If your computer's under warrenty, call the manufacturer and let them walk you through it, it's fairly easy to do ( only after you've done it about 2-3 dozen times ... :) ).