I need PC help

If anyone out there has a vast knowledge of PCs, I need your help. My PC took an unexpected dive. I am now stuck using the work pc. But here is the jist of whats wrong:

I booted my laptop today only to find that the wifi net was down so i said oh well, listened to some tunes, and then jumped on the work pc to come on here. The work pc uses a diff. network. There are 2 networks in the building, ones wireless and one is all state net. details. anywho, i decided to clean up my desktop a lil on my laptop so i put some icons away in different folders all of which were created by me and not modifying any programs or anything like that. jumped back on the work pc, purused the net for a while then decided i wanted to play a game i had on my laptop. i click on the game and i get a error message saying: "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Creat an association in the Folder Options control panel." I was like WTF? try again. same thing. i click on windows media player and same thing. every program i click on does this. ok, no big deal, ill do a system restore. i get the same ****in message. damn. i reboot the pc and press F8 and attempt to do a system restore from safe mode. again same message. i reboot, press F8 and try to load pc from the "last known good configuration." and it loads back to a still ****ed up state, only this time all the programs that used to load up when starting windows ie antivirus and such dont even load up. no programs will operate and the pc wont let me do a system restore. can anyone help me??? please??? i dont have money for a new laptop. btw im runnin windows XP.

sounds like some of your file associations are corrupted...a very rare problem that ive ran into working for firedog at circuit city. you're running windows xp correct?

here's the fix for it http://www.dougknox.com/index.html

on the menu to the left, click on "Win XP Fixes", then scroll down and find "File Association Fixes" and choose the extensions that are giving you the problems and it should fix it

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Originally Posted by khan4rtist

sounds like some of your file associations are corrupted...a very rare problem that ive ran into working for firedog at circuit city. you're running windows xp correct?

here's the fix for it http://www.dougknox.com/index.html

on the menu to the left, click on "Win XP Fixes", then scroll down and find "File Association Fixes" and choose the extensions that are giving you the problems and it should fix it

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how do i administer these fixes when i cant open any program on my pc? seriously, i cant open any internets, media player, calculator, nothing. i was told to do a paralell installation of windows xp on the pc. you heard of this? i gotta google it to figure out what it is exactly.

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Originally Posted by khan4rtist

sounds like some of your file associations are corrupted...a very rare problem that ive ran into working for firedog at circuit city. you're running windows xp correct?

here's the fix for it http://www.dougknox.com/index.html

on the menu to the left, click on "Win XP Fixes", then scroll down and find "File Association Fixes" and choose the extensions that are giving you the problems and it should fix it

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how do i administer these fixes when i cant open any program on my pc? seriously, i cant open any internets, media player, calculator, nothing. i was told to do a paralell installation of windows xp on the pc. you heard of this? i gotta google it to figure out what it is exactly.

Insert cd into drive, select install windows xp, then select repair install. Something along those lines, you won't have to format and won't loose any files.

try downloading the file assosiation fixes from another computer and burn them onto a cd or a flash drive

make sure you download the .exe extention fix, its the most important one

STOP DO NOT DO THAT all you need to do is go in and back the date up or restart like it was a few days ago before any problems. step 1 hit start step 2 go to control pannel step 3 Perfomance and mantinace stap 4 System Restore Click on restore to an earlier date choose a day before you downloaded your last stuff. that could have the problem. that is all. you will lose anything you did after the restore date but it will take care of it then when done Defrag the hard drive. i know this cuz i got a nasy virus from limewire one day and that fixed it right quick.

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Originally Posted by B1rdbrain

STOP DO NOT DO THAT all you need to do is go in and back the date up or restart like it was a few days ago before any problems. step 1 hit start step 2 go to control pannel step 3 Perfomance and mantinace stap 4 System Restore Click on restore to an earlier date choose a day before you downloaded your last stuff. that could have the problem. that is all. you will lose anything you did after the restore date but it will take care of it then when done Defrag the hard drive. i know this cuz i got a nasy virus from limewire one day and that fixed it right quick.

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anything i try to open brings about that message. ANYTHING, short of bringing up the start menu. i am going to try and do the paralell installation of XP now...

Did you try to start the windows in safe mode?
when you boot after the bios screen press F8 and the boot menu will apear, chooze safe mode whithout networking, then find out which programs are on the start up list, try the system restore, see if this helps and scan your pc for malware too.
Now if this is not working i think you shood do a repair install on XP, that is easy first you set up bios to boot from cd rom, then you put the XP instalation disk folow the messages as they show up it will say that another instalation of XP is detected and it will ask you what to do, now you need to choose to repair the existing one instead of new, next thing you need to know is that it will apear as it is makeing a new instalation but without the format screen, don't worry it's normal and all the setings will be as they were before. so Good Luck pal :)

Mike,

What is the status of this. One thing I can tell you is that system restore is not a good idea. Sometimes(mostly) it messes it up more. A parallel install is an install into another directory, effectivly a fresh install. You will not lose data, but will have to reinstall all of your programs to make the proper registry changes, etc. You will also have to move you data from the original install to the new parallel install. This could be the result of a virus, so you may want to consider backing up the data and reformatting the drive and do a clean install. If you cannot recover the files via safe mode, there are utilities that boot from a CD or flash drive that will access the drive. Give us an update.

system restore is inaccessible. its missing the file link or whatever.

update, went to gop fix the damned thing and as i got ready to plug it in, the power pack fried out. so i cant do jack because i do not know how long it will take to install windows xp again and i dont wanna run out of battery mid installation. is it just a sign to get a new one(laptop)?

I know exactly what your talking about ( I own a commercial networking/PC business and am the Supervisor of the Verizon Fios system for the state of Ohio, so yeah I have a bit of experience)

Unfortuently the fix is going to be painful as you WILL loose all of your settings. If you could run .exe files, id say run CCleaner.. but OBVIOUSLY you can't, so you have to do one of two things.

1. Reformat .. place your Windows CD in the drive.. and boot to it... this will start you from scratch... this is similar to the parallel idea.. except with parallel.. youll basically cut your hard drive in half storage wise.

2. Repair Load.. this may work... I can not garuntee it tho.. follow the same steps as a reformat.. skip the first "repair" option.. when you get to the section of the process where you choose what partition you want to install to you will do a repair load then .. by pressing "r"

I can run you through this no problem .. if you need any help .. just give my work cell a call .... 614-592-8347 ... we can get you fixed. but chances are ...everything you dont have backed up is gone.

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Originally Posted by Aveo07z

I know exactly what your talking about ( I own a commercial networking/PC business and am the Supervisor of the Verizon Fios system for the state of Ohio, so yeah I have a bit of experience)

Unfortuently the fix is going to be painful as you WILL loose all of your settings. If you could run .exe files, id say run CCleaner.. but OBVIOUSLY you can't, so you have to do one of two things.

1. Reformat .. place your Windows CD in the drive.. and boot to it... this will start you from scratch... this is similar to the parallel idea.. except with parallel.. youll basically cut your hard drive in half storage wise.

2. Repair Load.. this may work... I can not garuntee it tho.. follow the same steps as a reformat.. skip the first "repair" option.. when you get to the section of the process where you choose what partition you want to install to you will do a repair load then .. by pressing "r"

I can run you through this no problem .. if you need any help .. just give my work cell a call .... 614-592-8347 ... we can get you fixed. but chances are ...everything you dont have backed up is gone.

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That's what I told him to do a few posts ago.

well im waiting on dell at the moment. they are shipping me a new AC adapter as the new one i bought from the 6 months ago crapped out. as soon as i get it im gonna try the repair thing and if that dont work, there were a couple of other suggestions to try. thanks guys, will let you know how it turns out.

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Originally Posted by mikedudley17

well im waiting on dell at the moment. they are shipping me a new AC adapter as the new one i bought from the 6 months ago crapped out. as soon as i get it im gonna try the repair thing and if that dont work, there were a couple of other suggestions to try. thanks guys, will let you know how it turns out.

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worst comes to worst, buy a 2.5 inch hard drive enclosure and stick the hard drive in so you can back up everything on another computer before formatting.

ARG! i reinstalled XP and still same probs, nothing fixed. will continue trying.

tempted to call u, Aveo07z...

Edit: i went on the dougknox.com site and went to the file association fixes part and followed the tip on top of the page which says: "NOTE: If your EXE file associations are corrupted, it can be difficult to open REGEDIT, or to even import REG files. To work around this, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and open Task Manager. Once there, click File, then hold down the CTRL key and click New Task (Run). This will open a Command Prompt window. Enter REGEDIT.EXE and press Enter.
Thanks to Nigel Andrews for this tip."

I was actually able to open internet explorer like this. so, i can get into my regisry editor as well. is there a way to fix the prob from there?

download the filetype association fix by opening iexplorer that way, then run the fix that way too...should work.

If you have reformatted, and as soon as you start windows its back to the same thing then I would say its a hardware issue, I'd start with a new hard drive.

The format was supposed to erase ALL the old files, along with all corruption of windows files. The format set all new "virgin software in place, meaning free from corruption, so there fore free from your error. So that being the case, I'd say its not a software issue, as it should all be new anyway, and move to hardware. The hard drive being the most likely, followed by you memory.

You may have not correctly formatted your hard drive, when you reinstall XP, it will give you 2 formatting options. One is quick format and the other is regular format, you should have chosen the regular formatting that way the drive gets "zeroed out" which basically means that every single thing on the hard drive is erased. Sometimes, remanance of another installation will affect your new installation of XP.

Just for clarification the only difference between a quick format and a regular one is that a regular format scans the disk for bad sectors. Both formats only erase the file allocation table, thus actually leaving the entire file system intact, just no index or directory. To completely erase the contents, first choose to delete the partition, then create an new partition, and format. This is still not completely unrecoverable as far as computer forensics go, but will remove all remnants of previous installs. Try this before you buy hardware. chkdsk /r will also scan the disk for bad sectors.

ok, i can open IE like i said but since the reinstall of XP i need to reinstall my linksys wireless card and it wont allow me to due to the file association deal. so i havent had time to try a reg. cable line connection but if that works then i will try it that way and go get all the fixes from that site. if not the laptop is goin in da garbage and i will be ordering a new one from tigerdirect.com. unless anybody wants an older laptop to try and fix and let their kids use or sumtin. its been a good laptop to me. worked for over 5 years without probs. guess all good things must come to an end.

hey mike, how much you want for it?

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Originally Posted by NYChevoo

hey mike, how much you want for it?

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its not currently for sale but i will update if and when info becomes availible.

PS: u got a pm

I might go as far as using a program like darik's boot and nuke... the windows installer full format function does a crappy job itself... DBAN can overwrite the whole physical drive with zeros, not just the partition you select... it's possible you have a virus that made it's way into the boot sector of the drive... the windows installer format feature isn't likely to be able to format over this.

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Originally Posted by khan4rtist

You may have not correctly formatted your hard drive, when you reinstall XP, it will give you 2 formatting options. One is quick format and the other is regular format, you should have chosen the regular formatting that way the drive gets "zeroed out" which basically means that every single thing on the hard drive is erased. Sometimes, remanance of another installation will affect your new installation of XP.

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