PCA Forums

you go to start menu and then all programs then click on a program .
here is were the problem starts .
after you click on the program you want a window pops up asking what you what program do you want to use to open the program .
it give you a choice of programs just some i remember coming up in the box below.
adobe , internet explorer ,word ,note pad & others i just dont remember them .
also give you the option to search your hard drive for a program to open it.
it is windows xp running on this machine

sounds like it is not an exe that you are trying to open

More likely it's a file than a program. Windows apparently doesn't have a program associated with the file to run it. If it doesn't automatically find the proper program to run it (search online), then the best thing to do is to check what the file extension is (aka.: .pdf, .txt, .doc, .swf, etc.). If it really is a program that you are trying to access, something is really messed up.

Sounds like the association for .EXE files is broken. This can happen if a virus is improperly removed.

Assuming there was not a virus you cleaned just before this happened then the simplest fix is to use System Restore.

There are also .EXE file association registry fixes but the problem is that if .EXE is broken then something else might be too.

If this is for XP you will find file association registry patches for all major file extensions including .EXE here: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

Hope this helps...