windows 98 cant open .exe files

[5lab]

hi there

a friend of mine tried deleting some registry files to remove a virus and now has a registry (win98 1st edition) that wont open .exe files - it brings up the 'what program do you want to open this with..' dialog box. any one got any ideas what reg fix can be applied, or failing that, does anyone have a basic-ish win98 registry backup file i can toy with?

cheers

Hugh

[5lab]

nemind, fixed it

[Nick]

Glad we could help!

ps. Isn't it something to do with file associations?

[këö¬t]

there was a virus, sircam i think, that changed the file association for exe files to itself, so that whenever you ran a program you'd be reinfected.
for future refrence, on windows 98 (and probably windows 2000/XP/2003) if you rename program.exe to program.com it will work. microsoft modified windows to look at the executeable and run it accordingly instead of checking the extension.