anyone come across a situation where all the ".lnk" files are no good, nothing in the START menu works, no ".exe" files work, System Restore does nothing, etc. etc. etc. have happen to them? My computer is virtually worthless except to get on the internet (oddly enough) and to play audio/video files. i'm trying my best not to reinstall windows or redo my harddrive. let me know if anyone knows anything. thanks.

7/17/2007 10:17:46 PM

Something had to trigger this. Can you give some background?

7/17/2007 10:20:29 PM

programs running: (in background) ad-aware, norton antivirus (school-run edition), and tea-timer that i can readily think of; programs running in taskbar: AIM, firefox, thunderbird, IE, musicmatch, and trying to run DVD shrink.

upon every reboot there is a window that pops up with "webdings" or whatever those figures are in both the title bar and dialog box. there's an option to select "Ok" and that's it. it appears over the background screen that tells you windows xp is starting (light blue screen, windows logo, and opening chime)

7/17/2007 10:26:08 PM

regedit, msconfig, system restore all aren't accessible

7/17/2007 10:27:29 PM

find a way to save this to a .reg file (using another system or something) and run it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@=""%1" %*"

7/18/2007 12:26:37 AM

get a copy of HijackThis... run it and post the log to one of the numerous forums where people who know what they're doing can help you.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

7/18/2007 3:16:22 AM