Sounds like a virus. easiest thing to do is format & reinstall Windows, or you can probably right click on the icon & choose OPEN

Why is that always the answer? It wasn't a virus, the machine was brand new, never been on the internet. It turned out to be a missing registry key, as far as I could tell. Didn't know what else was missing, so I did a repair installation and it fixed it.

Format and reload should always be the last answer. Its the easy way out. Especially when you are dealing with a customers computer.

Soup

nothing indicated all that info in the original post.

Yes it is the easy answer. why get headaches when it can be simple...

Glad to hear that it's sorted. I'd be curious, though, as to how the Registry key went 'missing'?


Yes, format/fresh install is the 'easy way out' and yes, it should be seen as a 'last resort'.

Sometimes, however, it is also the best course of action. People should refrain from trotting out that piece of advice with careless abandon, but also should not hesitate to give it when warranted.

If that missing regisrey key, for example, has occurrred after some rather ill-advised tinkering on the system, one problem fixed might well be followed by several more soon cropping up. If there is underlying system corruption which a refresh install doesn't adequately correct, then a fresh install is certainly a preferred oiption over fiddling around tracvking down numerous problems one by one.


Horses for courses

Amen to that Catweazle...I just spent the last several months trying to track down a bunch of small problems that got bigger as time went by, only to have the computer fail to boot one day. After reformating I now have a smooth running machine. :cheesy:

The down side of this of course is reinstalling and downloading all the information I lost, training AVG not to hide my mail, and setting all my personal settings...all toll, a couple of days work.

I guess when you are used to starting from scratch you are always prepared for it & have everything backed up & on as few disks as possible. Recovery can take me a mere half a day to get things back exactly the way they were before. But for those that are unprepared it might be heart wrenching to lose the things that they had & never got around to backing up. The worst case like that was a dumb-deaf dude i knew lost everything, including his list of other dumb-deaf friends he had online & had taken years to find.