[statelawdog]

I have suffered an interesting problem. After booting up all the programs listed to start are opened with notepad. If I start in safemode there isnt a problem. I have run Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft SE, Microsoft Spyware, Norton Anti-Virus and Registery Mechanic. I see nothing obvious when I look at the tabs on msconfig. Any Suggestions?

[Advertisements]

don't follow you....what do you mean they open with notepad?

what happens when they "open"

[gerryf]

don't follow you....what do you mean they open with notepad?

what happens when they "open"

[statelawdog]

If this is repost my aploigies, as the machine boots each program, ie, Norton, Windows Spyware, programs that remain resident, a notpad page opens for each program with nothing but giberish on the notepad page. When I try to open any program: Word, a game, etcl, a Notepad page opens with nothing but symbols on the page.

[gerryf]

this is when YOU load a program, or when WINDOWS loads a program?

[statelawdog]

Both, however in safemode programs load ok

[pmprogrammer]

I have seen the exact same problem on a computer today, except that instead of using Notepad to open programs (.exe's), Windows XP is using Adobe Reader (acrord32.exe). I did not try safe mode.

When I tried to run regedit (Start, Run - typed in 'regedit') guess what happened? Adobe popped up trying to load 'regedit.exe'. Same with any .exe - Adobe has become associated as the application to use to open .exe's.

Looking in 'Folder Options' I do not see an entry for '.EXE' listed - which makes sense, because EXE's don't require a program to open them - they ARE the programs.

I thought about uninstalling Adobe, but then worried that might really cause problems...How do we fix this little problem?