So yesterday i get a call from a friend that his little sister was messing with his computer and that now mostly eveything opens up with Notepad. Everything from Yahoo Messenger, to the System Restore that comes with XP.
So i know that the file arseociations for .EXE files got jacked up.
All progams which run under windows will most likely have an extension of .EXE, which stands gor Executable. i Run the File Types tool to see if i can reset, but its not in there. So then i try to go into the registry to see the File arseociatians for there, but when i try to open the registry editor, i get Notepad!
I also tried to run the Repair console from the WinXP CDROM but it wants to log on as administrator to do so, but there is no Administrator account on the computer, just owner. So no repair.
I then break out a utilities disk that i have that will boot into a windows-like enviroment and let me perform certain tasks, like move files of the dead system to another drive or up onto a network, it also has a Registry editor. I go to the registry and see that the file arseociation key for .EXE is says that is to be recognized as a Text File, the key was set to txtfile when it should have been set to exefile and content type to application/x-msdownload.
i rebooted the machine and it looked to be booting up fine, and then we see and error message like box that says "you have been f*kED". So we call the little sister in and she tells us that this what she saw right before everything got all jacked up. it had an OK button, she didnt click OK, she clicked the X, but it still jacked up the registry, so i left the box open, ran MSCONFIG, and disabled eveything that starts up on boot, and rebooted and that message did not come up, so that program is still in the box somewhere, just have to find which one it is and delete it!!
any ideas??
