Unable to open any file without association

I am running an IBM 300 XL, NT 4.0 SP6 (current with all updates and patches) with 96 mb RAM that was working correctly when I left work Friday afternoon. This morning when I came in, none of the icons on my Office Toolbar would work. Whenever I clicked on an icon I would get the following error message:

"This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in My Computer by clicking View and then clicking Options. "

Upon further investigation, the problem was not just limited to the toolbar. Any unassociated file type that I double clicked on in explorer would produce the same error instead of the opening the "Open With..." dialog box. I also noticed that if I right click on any of these files, there are 2 options for open with: "Open With..." and "Open with... ".

Thanks for any assistance.

 

Sounds like your registry took a hit. Do you have a current ERD for the PC?

 

That's what I thought as well. However, I do not have an ERD to use. In their infinite wisdom, our PC support group removed the ability for us to create ERDs. They felt that we could do more damage than good if we used it. Instead, anytime we have a problem like this, their answer is to jusr re-image the machine.

Any idea what keys might be corrupted that I could try to fix manually? I did look at the 'Open With' keys and compared them to a good machine but they appeared the same.

 

Check the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Exefile\Shell\Open

 

Unixfan,

Thanks, but I had already found that link and followed the steps listed. However, it had no effect. I even deleted the key and recreated it and still had the same results.

 

If you fix/set a specific association, does it then work? After a reboot?

If not, you may not have much choice since it sounds like at least part of your registry is bad.

 

If I create an association, it does work for that file type. However, unknown file types and all the Office Toolbar icons still don't work.

 

You might already have seen 172053 dealing with .lnk issues but if not, worth a read as it may bear on your office toolbar problem.

And if you can re-associate a file type with an app and have it hold, it might be worth doing them manually. There aren't that many in normal daily use.

 

You might already have seen 172053 dealing with .lnk issues but if not, worth a read as it may bear on your office toolbar problem.

And if you can re-associate a file type with an app and have it hold, it might be worth doing them manually. There aren't that many in normal daily use.

 

I had tried that but it didn't change anything. I don't need to re-associate any file types because the registered types still work. I changed the command for 'Unknown' types to open in NotePad. My main concern was trying to get the Office toolbar to work since I use that almost exclusively to launch apps.

 

Have you tried a repair of Office?

 

Depending on your version of Office, doesn't the installer ask you for the original program to repair the installation when you try to run an Office app?

In any case, you will almost certainly need to reinstall Office, as mentioned.

 

I have repaired Office. It didn't have any effect. I didn't think it would since the problem was not limited to just the office toolbar. I have even deleted all references in the registry to the toolbar and deleted the toolbar folder on my hard drive. I rebuilt the toolbar and nothing changed so it must be picking up an OS key when I click on an icon.

One other item of note is that I now have a CLSID option when I right click on a file. I have never, ever seen that on any machine or any OS before.

 

I finally solved it!! I am fortunate enough to have 2 PC on my desk so I did a comparison of different registry keys between the 2 machines. I compared all the keys that I knew had anything to do with file opening behavior.

The problem was the following keys:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\openas]
@= "Open with... "

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\openas\command]
@= "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,OpenAs_RunDLL \ "%1\" "

The machine without the problem did not have this key. It only had [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex]. I deleted (after backing up, of course) the openas key and the problem went away.

I am still trying to determine what made the change in the first place, but at least the problem is fixed. Thanks to everyone for their assistance.