problems opening programs

[pops39]

Hi !
wonder if you can help?
my computer has recently started a problem in that when i try to open a program from hard drive or cd it will not open but i get a message to say"windows can not find(name of program).exe"

i am running windows xp
i managed to run norton anti virus on my c drive and it found a trojan horse and said to run my windows vga6 program but it will not open/run as the above message appears

[TazUk]

The virus has probably modified the Windows shell settings which is why you get errors running programs. Norton would have removed the virus but not changed the shell settings in the registry back to what they should be It is fixable but it means fiddling with the registry, I'm not sure how confident you are at doing that

[pops39]

would i have to get a copy of a registry off a working computer and just copy/re-type into faulty registry or is not that simple?
is there anything i could look at to see what is involved?
or do i need a techno-wizard

[TazUk]

[pops39]

[pops39]

would you believe it after not being able to get time to try out your sugestion,right away, all i got was a error message saying "windows can not find REGEDIT"
is there anything i can do?
even tried to get to it through search all files but still came up with same answer.
hope you can help.

[TazUk]

Try running REGEDT32

[pops39]

same again unfortunately message saying "windows can not find
REGEDT32"

[TazUk]

Ok you need to locate either REGEDIT or REGEDT32, these should be in C:\Windows\System32\, rename it from REGEDIT.EXE / REGEDT32.EXE to REGEDIT.COM / REGEDIT32.COM. Depending on your settings the extension might be hidden, this can be turned on by going to Tools, Folder Options, View in My Computer. Once it's renamed try running it.

[pops39]

hi taz, HAPPY NEW YEAR

no luck there either.
"windows canot open ***********.com file"
is what i am getting now.

it wont even let me open system restore. is it time to think about reformat hard drive and start again?

[TazUk]

[pops39]