no programs will run

I tried both, neither will open once it's on my hard drive, comes up and want to know what to open it with. If I tell it to look on the net it doesn't do anything, it will go to a list for me, but I don't know what program to tell it to open with?

It is an option before deleting what the program finds. If you did, try restoring and see if that fixes the problem.

It asked if I wanted to create a restore point, and I did, but the only way for me to get to restore is in safe mode, which I did, and it didn't make a difference.

also, it didn't say anything about deleteing anything, it just said a program was trying to edit my registry and I chose to not allow it.

harley, Go into Folder Options (Start/Control Panel/Folder Options) and under the File types tab scroll down to INF and hilite it, click the "Advanced" button, then click the "Set Default" button, click OK/Apply/OK. Now see if you can right click on the Fixswen.inf file and choose Install.

Tufenuf

I still get a message that says: Windows can't open this file:
gpconv.exe
To open this file, Windows needs to know what program created it. Then I get the option to look it up on the web or choose it from a list.

An exe file is an executable file, and Windows does not need to know which programming language created it. If Windows will not recognize an exe file, there may be something corrupt in your Winows installation. If it recognizes it, but cannot open it, the file may not really be an exe file (despite its extension) or has been seriously corrupted An exe file may not run after being opened because some other file it needs is missing, but then you sould get an error stating this, not that it needed to know the creating program.

Did yo do a search to see if the file gpconv.exe even exists on your system? I am not familiar with this program file, and a search using both Yahoo and Comcast (Google) found nothing, so I have no clue as to its source.

I might suggest you not use the restore point created when you ran AdAware, but use Windows System Restore to go back a little farther in time

"grpconv.exe?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-19,GGLD:en&lr=lang_en&q=grpconv.exe&spell=1

I did a search on C (my only hard drive) and it isn't found, but that's the message I get when I try to install the fixswin program

Everything I download from there, when I try to open it I get the following message:
Window cannot open this file
File: xp_exe_fix.reg
To open this file, Windows needs to know wht program created it. Windows can go online and look it up automatically or you can manually select it from a list of programs on your computer.
If I choose to look it up online, nothing happens. No window, nothing. If I chose to do it from a list, I don't know what program to use.

" For the ZIP file fix, the download is a REG file, since ZIP's aren't working anyway! "

After that it should get better.

Bob

It comes us with the same message, it must download, because in properties it shows space taken up, but will not open?

harley3, Go into Folder Options (Start/Control Panel/Folder Options) and under the File Types tab scroll down to REG and hilite it, click the Advanced button then hilite the word Merge and click the Set Default button and OK your way out. Now see if you can right click the .exe fix .reg file you downloaded from the dougknox site and choose merge.

Tufenuf

REG is no where in my program list! I am beginning to think my registry is wiped, but how? and why can I get into outlook, and from there to the net?

It makes a mess so the owner can't repair it.

I wish I could see your machine since I could try the command line to fix the ZIP registry to allow the use of the other association fixes.

You seem to have the skill level of just using the graphical interface and may not have the skills yet to boot XP in the command line mode to make the needed repairs. Don't feel bad, not many can fix this.

And there is no step by step since each system seems to need a custom repair job.

Bob

so you're not able to run .lnk or any .anything except .exe?

then run regedit (WINDOWS+R then type regedit and press ok)

and drag-n-drop the .reg file that you downloaded into regedit

same with a zip file, run c:\program files\winrar\winrar, or whatever you use for zip's, i suppose you can just drag-n-drop into an explorer window?

sorry if im not right on, i didnt read the entire topic.