I turned on my computer just now and all of my program icons are blank except for IE and the recycling bin. Nothing works from the start menu, so I cannot access System restore. I tried opening a few of the programs, and I get the option from Windows that tells me that Windows needs to know what file to open it with etc etc. For instance I'll choose to open Itunes with Itunes and it opened, but the Icon and all the other icons are blank. I use Mcafee but I cannot access it right now because of the problem. Any suggestions???

1/20/2008 8:43:10 AM

Program association is corrupted. Try system restore.

1/20/2008 9:31:45 AM

Couldn't restore it in regular mode, so I tried restoring it in safe mode, did so, but it didn't solve the problem

[Edited on January 20, 2008 at 9:42 AM. Reason : .]

1/20/2008 9:41:45 AM

bttt, or does anyone know of a quick fix place to get my comp fixed, pretty sure it's a common problem that wouldn't be difficult to fix

1/21/2008 9:33:59 AM

geek squad if you want to get raped. make another thread saying you need help and or post something on craigslist..how far back did you go with system restore? sometimes going back further helps. also, post a screenshot so we can help a little more thoroughly

1/21/2008 10:35:11 AM

Lol, the only thing geek squad is gonna recommend is to format your comp. Don't take it there.

1/21/2008 10:37:08 AM

^^, I went back a couple weeks with system restore, nothing. Yea, Geek Squad will basically charge an arm and a leg to simply reformat, which I could do myself but would take more time than I want. Here are my pics of my desktop, it's blurry but you can see that EXE icons are not working by clicking on them, and I can't access disc defrag, restore, etc by clicking on them, had to go to the command line

1/21/2008 11:47:42 AM

run a repair on the OS


it will wipe out restore points, but i have a feeling it'll fix this.

1/21/2008 11:54:09 AM

instead of taking a pic with a camera, press the prntScrn button on your keyboard and paste it into ms paint. Then upload that pic. But what you might be able to do is those are just shortcuts. Delete them and recreate your shortcuts and it should be ok.

[Edited on January 21, 2008 at 12:14 PM. Reason : .]

1/21/2008 12:14:10 PM

^^, How?
^, tried deleting them, and then creating them again, but nothing

1/21/2008 12:18:37 PM

Try running the program from the program directory. As in navigate in explorer to the program folder and run the exe. And not from the start menu.

[Edited on January 21, 2008 at 12:20 PM. Reason : .]

1/21/2008 12:20:01 PM

ok, I reformatted my hard drive, and I use an 80GB as my primary hard drive, but my secondary hard drive isn't being recognized. It shows up in the bios, but when I look in my computer it isn't there. Tried to go to add new hardware but didn't have any luck. When I went to disc manager form my computer, it shows the primary HDD as basic, and running fine and all, but it shows my secondary HDD as "dynamic" and underneath that it says "foreign." I can right click on it and make it basic, but it says it will wipe it if I do that.

1/23/2008 10:36:36 AM

you need help.



call a nerd to do this for you.

1/23/2008 10:40:17 AM

does it look like any of these?

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/01/malwarez_cyber_threats.html

1/23/2008 10:52:01 AM

This sounds similar to a virus that I had back in college on my Win2K box. Basically, the virus went into my registry and rerouted all extensions to a dummy file. I looked around for a fix, but couldn't find one. So, as a temporary solution, I renamed my registry "Regedit.com" (as opposed to exe). This allowed me to open up the registry and see where the extensions were pointing. I could then change them to the proper values while looking at a friend's machine that wasn't corrupted.

You may not have the same problem that I did, but it may be worth checking out to see if something devious pointed extensions to dummy files inside the registry.

1/23/2008 11:33:53 AM