Program links and icons all open Word document instead of the programs themselves.

Anonymous
2010-05-16T01:17:15+00:00

Suddenly, all of my program icons on the Desktop and Taskbar have changed into MS Office word icons and open a word document instead of the programs.  I cannot open any programs and the Word document is meaningless.

Robert M. Engelbardt

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2015-08-27T16:36:34+00:00
  1. Click on the Windows logo "Start" button on the bottom left corner of your screen
  2. Type in "regedit"
  3. Click on "regedit" search result
  4. Click on "Yes" to make changes
  5. Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\

Software\

Microsoft\

Windows\

CurrentVersion\

Explorer\

FileExts.

lnk

  1. Delete the other keys except "OpenWithProgids"
  2. Log off and log back on

That should return all your links back to normal! :)

thank you very much but one doubt,what about deleated keys, what is the function of that keys?

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Anonymous
2015-01-02T07:20:35+00:00

Many Thanks this way has solved my problem .. cheers

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Anonymous
2010-05-24T22:03:00+00:00

The problem was finally resolved with the assistance of Microsoft Support.  We started from scratch by setting up a new user account and deleting the current one.  Everything works fine now but we never were able to determine how the problem happened in the first place.

Robert M. Engelbardt

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-01-21T09:18:54+00:00

    Worked great the very first time!

    There were several others proposed solutions that I saw on the web but they were all quite complicated and/or required downloading files and then manually making edits to the links of the applications.

    This solution was by far the best and easiest to implement. Resolved the problem.

    Thank you very much (I have copied the steps in a document for future use).

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-01-23T18:51:05+00:00

    Your welcome! I'm glad it helped; it was frustrating for me for a while too!

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