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General discussion

getting application not found message and open with problem

Jul 25, 2010 3:59PM PDT

Hello, i am trying to fix a friends laptop ,it is a windows 7 32 bit system, it had over 70 viruses which have now been cleaned, problem is clicking on any icon or program to start it results in an "open with" box opening up, i constantly have to open programs with right click and "run as administrator" every time ! also cannot open task manager, regedit etc any .exe file i get application not found, when i went into system32 to see if the files were there i cant find them , seems a lot of her .exe files have gone and no she has not backed up the laptop when she first bought it so there is no way to recover back to begining, shes only had it a couple of month so its not got lot on for her to lose butas she has not made a recovery back up i dont know what to do now, any help much appreciated

Discussion is locked

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These new systems
Jul 25, 2010 7:26PM PDT

often come with a Recovery Partition. Without a model and make we can't say, but since you are there you can look at the system and any manual/paperwork there is for guidance how to do this.

You say there is not a lot on the system so a recovery might be the best bet, but that would return the system to factory install, and delete everything.

Mark

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recovery partition
Nov 24, 2010 5:26PM PST

Hi Mark,

Are you talking about recovery partition software?I don't think it can solve
the problem because,it is used to recover a partition if it gets deleted.
As far as I think this is a problem of windows registry.

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Perhaps
Jul 25, 2010 11:01PM PDT
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problem fixed
Jul 26, 2010 5:37PM PDT

Hello, yes there was a recovery partition, but it was empty, she had not done as recommended and backed up the system on first run, anyway , as she had no antivirus or any protection i went and downloaded AVG to start with and ran that , it founf over 70 items mostly trojans , there was some backdoor thing as well , i was shocked , got rid of them and restarted pc thinkin that was problem , but stll getting open with boxes and still could not run any .exe file,i could not even use the run or command facility , they all just gave me an "open with" box and if i tried that , it went to download a file ! was driving me mad, i also downloaded CC cleaner and removed a lot of stuff , then i came across a program while looking for help , called malwarebytes, i downloaded this , thinking it would not find any more as AVG had found so many, well it did , another 39 things , and the last one on the list was a thing called Hijacked,exefiles or something like that, anyway , when i restarted the laptop, all was back to normal,thank goodness, all the little icons went back to where they should be and everything opened as it should, needless to say i made a backup of the hard drive on to the extra partition just in case, thansk for your help and suggestions

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That's great work
Jul 26, 2010 7:38PM PDT

and congratulations. Many would have baulked at repeated scans where they failed to fix things.

Your next task? How to ensure your friend avoids these problems in the future, Happy

Mark

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Malwarebytes found virus, I still get "open with..."
Nov 22, 2010 11:12PM PST

I am virus free. I ran AVG. Then I ran Malwarebytes which found win32/kryptik.IJE and I put it in the vault. However I still have the same problem , I am unable to open any application, I get "open with choose the program you want to use to open thsi file ".

I think the problem is when Malwarebytes vaulted my virus it deleted a few registry keys. How do I fix this?

I cannot click start and run SFC or regedit either because what pops up is "open with choose the program..."

I cannot downloard a file or registry cleaner because "open with choose the ..."

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The Run The EXE Filx
Nov 23, 2010 12:20AM PST
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I found the fix for windows XP registry!!! yea
Nov 23, 2010 4:04AM PST

Dear Grif
Your link was for Windows 7 fix, but I used that info to google search a fix Windows XP.

It took 1 second to down load and whala its fixed!!!!!!! I am so happy.
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

I clicked on "fix for EXE"

yoru computer will ask two times are you sure you want to download, say yes.

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In the future.
Nov 23, 2010 4:42AM PST

If you have XP, try to post in the XP Forum. This being the Windows 7 forum you may think we think you are asking about Windows 7.
Bob

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(NT) Yep, Glad It's Fixed but This IS The Win7 Forum...
Nov 23, 2010 8:30AM PST
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A question
Nov 24, 2010 5:23PM PST

Gayle,

You mean to say that Malwarebyte deleted some of the keys in registry when you vaulted the
virus?

Are you sure you have all those software installed in the computers that open a perticular
application?

Pls do one thing,reboot your computer and go into the safe mode and see if you are able
to enter their successfully. If not,then just run the recovery console from the Win7 bootable
CD. Or if you don't have Win7 bootable CD, you can insert this hard drive in another computer as secondary drive,then boot that computer with its primary hard drive and use the registry cleaner on the secondary drive.