BIT Consultants » Windows XP http://www.bitconsultants.net Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:54:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Explorer: Executable files won’t launch http://www.bitconsultants.net/2009/explorer-executable-files-wont-launch/ http://www.bitconsultants.net/2009/explorer-executable-files-wont-launch/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 18:52:19 +0000 Rob http://www.fangledcontraption.com/?p=46 Recently, I have dealt with a few computers where malware had wrecked Windows Explorer’s handling of executable files. Whenever you attempt to launch an executable file, you are told Windows doesn’t know what to do with the file, sometimes being prompted to download the file you were trying to launch. Right-click the file linked here and save it to your desktop. Once it’s downloaded, right-click it and select Install. This should fix Windows handling of executable files. If you can’t get anything to launch, try showing file extensions by opening a folder or My Computer and selecting Tools > Hide extensions for known file types (uncheck the box); find the file you want to launch (e.g. “firefox.exe”), change the file extension to com (“firefox.com”).  It could be that only the exe file handling has been wrecked.

More information from Symantec (source of the fix) here: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-050614-0532-99

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