Changing Icons and File Associations Wrong

[Smilingcrafter]

My daughter has Windows XP on her computer. She called last night frantic,
and not knowing what to do, or what she had done. It seems many icons on her
startup menu have changed to a W, and when she tries to open various programs
they all open in a Microsoft Word format, and a box is shown stating "File
Conversion-Ms money.exe(or whatever program was opened) Select encoding that
makes document readable. Windows O; MS-Dos O; or Other O;" Then below is
shown a bunch of gibberish she can not read. Can someone please tell me how
to help her change icons back to normal, and how to start all programs
normally again..... so it will Mom to the rescue!!!! (Well with your help and
knowledge of course :hehe. )

~SmilingCrafter

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

File association fixes for Windows Vista:
http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/105/1/File-association-fixes-for-Windows-Vista.html

She can choose the file types she wants to fix here.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

That was for Vista. This one is for XP.

Restore Default File Associations Easily:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_easy_file.htm