Dumb computer problem...

[Hatta]

Which is a consequence of bad design.

[isiolia]

To be fair, nearly any time I've seen this issue it's due to malware screwing things up and not the registry just randomly getting corrupted. Can't really lay all of the blame at MS's feet there - compromise any OS and you can screw things up.

[fastbilly1]

To be fair, nearly any time I've seen this issue it's due to malware screwing things up and not the registry just randomly getting corrupted. Can't really lay all of the blame at MS's feet there - compromise any OS and you can screw things up.

I too have only seen it happen due to malware. Which I know I know, linux doesnt have malware - I use ubuntu and slackware on a daily basis (but am by no means an expert).

[Niode]

To be fair, nearly any time I've seen this issue it's due to malware screwing things up and not the registry just randomly getting corrupted. Can't really lay all of the blame at MS's feet there - compromise any OS and you can screw things up.

I too have only seen it happen due to malware. Which I know I know, linux doesnt have malware - I use ubuntu and slackware on a daily basis (but am by no means an expert).

I had this happen to me without malware. I've never had an infection and I don't download questionable files or visit questionable websites. My OS is kept up to date as are all my applications (thanks ninite!). I opened a self extracting exe file in winrar making sure I unchecked the 'default' option. It still changed the default and I was left with no support for launching .exe files. Being unable to address file launching defaults without having to resort to some serious registry tinkering is a serious design flaw.

[AppleQueso]

In XP you can just go to folder options and re-set the file association for EXE.

[MrPopo]

To be fair, nearly any time I've seen this issue it's due to malware screwing things up and not the registry just randomly getting corrupted. Can't really lay all of the blame at MS's feet there - compromise any OS and you can screw things up.

I too have only seen it happen due to malware. Which I know I know, linux doesnt have malware - I use ubuntu and slackware on a daily basis (but am by no means an expert).

Well, it does, just not nearly to the same degree that Windows does.

[Hobie-wan]

In XP you can just go to folder options and re-set the file association for EXE.

If you look, there is no item in the list for EXE files. They're being opened by the shell, not some other program. You can't just tell EXE files to open with Explorer.EXE or something. You won't get anywhere.

[Niode]

In XP you can just go to folder options and re-set the file association for EXE.

If you look, there is no item in the list for EXE files. They're being opened by the shell, not some other program. You can't just tell EXE files to open with Explorer.EXE or something. You won't get anywhere.

Yup. It's a complete nightmare when this happens. Just pray you've got a browser already open. You can't even go into safe mode (trust me, I tried). I ended up loading up the reg script on another computer copied it manually into text edit... (couldn't open explorer.exe to even see a USB stick to copy it from).

[Anayo]

Before I posted this topic I went ahead and put Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my netbook along with the Windows partition that was already there. (I'm using it to post this message now.) I basically use this netbook for internet and word processing, which Ubuntu seems to do well. With Windows, I had some gaming (read: time-wasting) stuff I'd use it for, like MS-DOS games and N64/Sega Genesis emulators, but I have a PSP and Nintendo DS so I can live without those. I knew there was malware in my windows OS, but I wasn't sure if correlation = causation with the programs not executing like they should. I guess if I have a powerful urge to play emulators on my netbook again I'll use the solution posted here, but for now I'm kind of busy with summer school and Ubuntu seems to work, so I'll mess with it later. Thanks for the input guys.

[Hatta]

Glad you figured out something that will work for you. FWIW, there are plenty of emulators available on Ubuntu. You should just be able to apt-get (or whatever they do in Ubuntu) Dosbox. Definitely give Mednafen a try. It's a multiemulator that supports Nes, GBA, PCE, and more. It's in the repository. For SNES and Genesis, I'd recommend Kega Fusion and ZSNES. I'm pretty sure ZSNES is in the repo, not sure about Fusion.

If you need any help, I can advise. I do all my emulation on Linux.