Problem with opening files-possible virus

I believe my daughter saved or moved a virus to MS Paint and now everytime I click on a .exe file it says 'Paint' cannot open it since it is not a bitmap file.

I have tried removing any viruses with Spybot and Norton products and even downloaded some worm removal virus from the Syamantec website that sounded like it was related to my problem but it said my computer was not infected with these specific viruses. I'm not sure if there is anything I can do now except to reinstall windows XP. I have been able to open some of the files by renaming .exe files to .com files. Had to do this as well to get into the system registry. On some programs it will allow me to open them by right clicking on the logo and hitting "open" but only a few. I cannot even access Internet Explorer by directly clicking on the logo.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

No, it didn't but I finally got rid of the problem by going into the registry and removing mspaint.exe as the extension file to open IE with. It was in 2 places so this did the trick! Thank you for your response though.