Problem opening folders and running files... (Win2k)

[Gambit]

Well, I was working on my cousins computer today. He mentioned a virus alert and some spyware he couldn't get rid of. So I grabbed my copy of Ultimate Boot CD for Windows and headed over. After running Avast!, nothing's found. I ran one more, and it picked up 311 infected files, none of which it could repair, so they were deleted.

Upon rebooting, everything seems peachy. I uninstalled Norton Antivirus and dropped in Free AVG instead. Things seem a bit better, but the problem is when you open My Computer, double clicking the drives does nothing (the drive never opens). Opening My Documents and clicking a file does the same thing... nothing. If I open MS Word and manually use File | Open, I can open the files no problem.

Any ideas what blew up and how to get it back the way it was? If it were my machine, I'd just format it and start over, but unfortunately, that's not an option right now.

 

[nessus]

Somehow, the associated actions for the folders and files actions are messed up.

Fixing folder associations is fairly straightforward, but fixing drive action associations is a bit trickier.

If you right-click on one of the word files, what options appear on the context menu?

If Open does not appear in bold at teh top of the menu, select the "Open with..." option. Select "Choose program". Click the always use selected program checkbox and select Word from the list.

After that, close word and try double-clicking another Word doc. It should open. If it doesn't, then you still have spyware or other BIG problems.

If that does fix it. Each file type that doesn't open will need to be fixed in a similar manner, or you can download some scripting and reg fixes for a lot of file types supported by XP out of the box here.

I checked the folder association correction file from the above site against my registry entries, and it looks good.

Also, I found a repair registry file for drive associations here. I downloaded the reg file and it looks correct for a base XP install. (I have some additional Roxio stuff from my CD Creator install.)

 

[Gambit]

right clicking files / folders doesn't do anything unfortunately. I have to actually go to the main menu and select Open to open a file/folder. This is true for any file/folder. Although I didn't think it'd really solve the problem, I reinstalled the mouse drivers, just in case. I checked the file associations and all seems well. For some reason, the actual double clicking doesn't seem to pass the correct message to windows. So far, I've done a search with adaware, spybot and spy sweeper. I've cleared everything, so I don't think it's adware... suggestions?