freeware exe files dont work??

weirdly and sadly... my computer cant run exe files... the pointer just turns into a pointer with the sand clock to the right like it's loading and all... and then... NOTHING HAPPENS
now the interesting part is that this only happens with freeware... like7-zip,alcohol, games like for ex. virtual villagers and others... and i have even formatted my hard drive and installed my win xp again on to a formatted hard drive but the problem still persists... please help MajorGeeks :major

THANK YOU!!

 

Try this:

Click Start>>Run. In Run type in "CMD" (without the quotes), click OK A Command Prompt window will open.

In Command Prompt type in "assoc.exe=exefile" (without the quotes) and hit Enter.

See if you can open the .exe files.

 

wow... tahnks... worked
what does that command do exactly? :confused

 

That command reassociates your .exe files with the Windows default. If you ever have the same problem with other files, such as .txt files, mp3 files, .wav files etc. not opening you can try commands for these files to reassociate them with the Windows default.

Right click on the link below and select "Save target as" or "Save to download folder".

This is a list of file association commands. To fix a file association use the same proceedure you did to fix your .exe files.


http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_fileassoc.txt


Glad the fix worked for you.