Unable to open any desktop icons

[sleepyjohn]

I have Windows XP Professional, Service pack 3 installed on my DELL desktop computer. I recently removed MS Antivirus 2010 (malware) from my hard drive.
I had to pull my hard drive from this computer and place it as a slave drive in another computer, in order to successfully run MalWareBytes (free version).

Now, the original hard drive back is back in the original computer, but none of the desktop icons function to open their respective programs.

A pop-up window displays, titled "Open With" and says, "Chose the program you want to use to open this file:" It then lists a couple of "Recommended Programs" and "Other Programs".

When I attempted to create a new shortcut icon, on the desktop, another pop-up window displays, titled "Rundll32.exe" and it states "rundll32.exe Application not found"

I have a Hewlett-Packard laptop, running Windows Media Center, that has this same problem. Can anyone guide me in the right direction? Thanks in Advance.

Sleepyjohn

 

[sleepyjohn]

The problem has been resolved, due to my perserverance, and my lack of any assistance.

I searched the internet and kept getting suggestions to download and install REGCURE. However, all these4 programs are ".exe" programs, and I couldn't get any of them to run. I was stuck.

One of my searched suggested that I open "Control Panel" and "Folder Options" , then "Files" and see if ".exe" was listed there. It was missing. So I added it, then I rebooted the computer and tested. First time, it failed once more, so I rebooted again. Now everything is working FINE.


Good Luck to the rest of you!

 

[sleepyjohn]

If things couldn't get more aggravating, I got another computer with this same infection, but this time it was on a VISTA computer.

In VISTA, Microsoft no longer allows us to go into "Control Panel", "Folder Options" and edit which files are listed. I went back to the message boards and read some of the replies (in detail) and found one message that had two downloads. One download was for MALWAREBYTES (MBAM.exe) and the other file was something called FIXEXE.REG (FixExe.reg). Guess what that file does? I ran that file and kicked myself for NOT reading through everyone's previous messages.

May I suggest that we answer help requests with SHORT answers. The attached files were 3-5 paragraphs down in someone else's reply, and I had NOT read that far down.

Best of luck to all.

Sleepyjohn