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General discussion

Open With... Messages

by JodyWood Dec 1, 2003 1:18AM PST

I am working on some phone support with a family member. They have encountered an odd issue that I have not seen before. Basically any program - MS Word, MS Excel, MS Outlook, Add/Remove Programs, Windows Explorer, Free Cell, etc. - brings up a message asking what to open the program with. However, they are able to open Internet Explorer and connect to the Internet. I'm not sure what has happened or what they did to get their PC in this state. Any ideas on how to proceed with troubleshooting this problem and correcting it would be greatly appreciated. If you need additional information from me, I will be glad to get it - just let me know.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Jody Wood

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
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Re:Open With... Messages
by Tufenuf Dec 1, 2003 2:32AM PST

Jody, The first thing I'd recommend is that they update their virus definitions and run a full virus scan. Some viruses are known to cause such problems. Another possible fix is to go to the link below and download and run the Fixswen.inf. file if they indeed have a virus.

A Setup INF file to undo registry changes made by W32/Swen@MM and other threats that prevent REGEDIT, BAT, COM, EXE, PIF, REG and SCR files from running.

Save the fixswen.inf file to your local hard disk, right-click on the file and choose install.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/averttools.asp


HTH
Larry

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Re:Open With... Messages
by JodyWood Dec 4, 2003 10:41AM PST

Looks like the problem occured after downloading, installing, and running a program called SpyHunter. It appears to have really messed up this PC. Looks like it will need to be re-built as I have not found any solutions to correcting the problem. I had the user attempt a rollback from within SpyHunter - no luck. Tried fixing the registry, but no luck. I don't have any other ideas at this point. SpyHunter tech support has offered no solutions either.

As a result, I would say not to use the program SpyHunter especially since it cost $30 just to get full functionality where it is supposed to remove the problems it finds.

Thanks for your ideas on this dilema.
Jody Wood

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Re:Re:Open With... Messages
by Josh K Dec 4, 2003 10:15PM PST

Sorry about your bad luck! After you get the computer rebuilt, download Spybot Search & Destroy. It does everything SpyHunter says it will do, and for free.

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