all exe files switched to .lnk file type??

[Kerry Snow]

A friend tried to use her laptop this afternoon, only to find that all of
her executable files had been renamed as .lnk files, making them unusable
and screwing up quite a few windows functions. Any ideas about how this
happened? More important, is there an easy fix or do we have to wipe the
drive and start from scratch?

 

[Ricky]

Try this link and see if it will help..
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

 

[Guest]

Did the extension change to ".exe.lnk" or did ".exe" get replaced by ".lnk"?

If the former, they probably did not really get renamed (see below), but if
they actually got renamed, check if this has happened throughout the disk (in
Program Files and Windows\System32, for example). The exe files that are
parts of Windows itself must not have been renamed, or you would not be able
to start Windows at all.

Most of the "programs" that you find on your desktop and in the start menu are
not the actual exe files, but are just shortcuts to them.
Shortcuts actually have the extension .lnk - but this is usually hidden by
explorer by default, so that a shortcut to file.exe is actually named
file.exe.lnk, but displays in explorer as file.exe

It could be that the associations for .lnk files have been messed up.
Search on Google for "lnk association" (without the quotes).

|A friend tried to use her laptop this afternoon, only to find that all of
|her executable files had been renamed as .lnk files, making them unusable
|and screwing up quite a few windows functions. Any ideas about how this
|happened? More important, is there an easy fix or do we have to wipe the
|drive and start from scratch?