User sets file association and now system restore does not work

Hi all,

On a brand new laptop the user copied some word files over, and they opened on the new computer just fine. Then they copied some more .doc files and they could not open them, so (they claim) they choose word as the default file association (which is fine, except it should not have prompted for that in the first place). After that all the word document shortcuts they created on the desktop changed to a shortcut with IE's 'e' symbol - clicking them flashes up a screen that instantly goes away (ie I assume) and ie's download file dialog then opens.

Further, an attempt to open ie acts the same way.

Worse, running system restore does the same thing - flash, then ie files downloaded dialog - asking if I want to open one of the files listed (which are the .lnk files to the word documents on the desktop).

So short of doing a full system restore, and also short of manually copying the registry files from the last restore point (which I'm not sure is even possible on a windows 7 drive) what can I do to resolve this mess?

thx
kpg

It's happens to actual word (.doc) documents, to shortcut's to the word documents (.lnk), to the start menu's 'Internet Explorer' and "System Restore" links, and probably a whole lot more.

I checked the file associations for doc files and it is correct, I looked for a program association to exe files and found none - I don't know there should be one (maybe not) but at first I thought exe's were trying to be opened by IE instead of whatever is supposed to open them (win.exe ?).