xp apps open in wordpad as docs!

IBM Thinkpad R51 laptop with Windows XP sp2.
Suddenly, when starting most apps (ie, ms word, AIM, etc) Wordpad is launched and the app exe is displayed as text. Only a few progs open normally including several adobe (illustrator) and mozilla - and only from program menu. Nothing new installed, nothing out of the ordinary being done on machine.l

 

Wordpad is opening .exe files?

 

Yes... When opening an application by double-clicking on its icon or rt-clicking and selecting "open", the wordpad app edit screen appears and then text with many symbols appears in the wordpad edit window. The file name of the app I selected appears as the title of the "document" in wordpad. So apparently windows is not aware that many of my appps are to be opened as exe's and rather, brings them up as text docs in wordpad. This happens with all app icons on the desktop, and nearly all in the start menu and the "all programs" menu. Exception is mozilla. Also, when I double click on a document or other "content" file like an illustrator file, the correct app opens in the correct way!

 

This is interesting...when I follow your instructions, Kaula, I find that WTX=Text Document, and also TXT=Text Document. Is WTX supposed to be a text document?

 

I haven't heard of that file type before, but yes, it does appear to be a text document file.

File Extension Details for .WTX