My daughter is running xp home on a Dell laptop. All her programs seem to be associated with windows media player and of course it gives the error that it can't play them. I have tried restore to a earlier date. Tried creating new shortcuts and icons. checked the registry exefile keys.messed with folder options. They only work by clicking the original program icon or if it is attached to the start menu ??? Helpless Dad

Windows XP Powertoy TweakUI (which can be downloaded from Microsoft's website) has a rebuild feature that lets you rebuild icons. However, I don't think it fixes bad associations. I think you need a registry fixer-upper.

Hi there,

That is a nasty problem, here is how you can possibly fix it for .ext

Select a file with a certain .ext like a .txt file and then right click your mouse. From the popup menu goto the 'Open with' or 'Run with' submenu and from there select 'Choose program'.

In the dialog that appears, make sure you select 'Always open this file using this program' and then select the appropiate program, in this example case, that could be notepad.exe


Good luck!

But do do that with every single file extension is simply impossible. I know I've seen something somewhere that lets one view/edit a listing of all Windows extensions and their associations. I don't remember if it was TweakUI, TweakXP, or somewhere deep within the control panel or what :/

You can edit the file types and what they open with from Tools-->Folder Options-->File Types if that's what you're talking about.