Problem starting any .exe files on desktop

Nsvyas · 23 Dec 2013

Hi there, this is my first post on this website but I found the people with a similar problem to mine were helped in a professional manner, and my problem still hasn't been resolved from a fix mentioned on this forum.

The problem started a couple weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue, whereby I could not start .exe files from my desktop. It seems to be mainly games that are affected.

Bit of extra info, I did download a file from a supposedly trusted website, however this proved problematic and installed adware on my computer, which I believe was removed but sometimes "Ads Removal 1.0.0" comes up as an extension in my Chrome browser, even after I delete it from there. However this adware problem came about a week before this newer problem with all of my .exe files, so I'm hesitant to link the two. I have also run several different anti malware and virus scanning programs since.

Bit MORE extra info, every time I attempted to start a game from its .exe shortcut, an event pops up in event viewer saying "Multimedia Class Scheduler Service entered a running state", leading me to believe this may be a problem with that service.

I'm happy to provide any more information you might need to help me with this problem!

Thanks in advance,
N.

EDIT
The event viewer logs change almost each time I double click the .exe files, sometimes they'll say Multimedia Class Scheduler, sometimes Windows Error Reporting Service entered a running/stopped state, sometimes the Application Experience, and other times the WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto Discovery Service.

All very confusing stuff to me!

Britton30 · 23 Dec 2013

Hello and welcome to Seven Forums. did you try this for the .exe extension?
Default File Type Associations - Restore

Nsvyas · 23 Dec 2013

Thanks for the reply, I had before, have done just now so I will restart my computer and see if that has fixed it! If it's any help, another person has suggested the problem starting .exe files that contain multimedia like games, is that I'm using switchable graphics. However I do not know how to change/amend this, or what this will mean to the performance of my games?

Kaktussoft · 23 Dec 2013

Is it all EXE files on desktop that don't work? Shortcuts don't work as well?

Kaktussoft · 23 Dec 2013

The problem started a couple weeks ago

Was it working fine on November 1st? On December 1st?

Give us a date it was working fine. Preferable not to far back in the past.

Nsvyas · 23 Dec 2013

It was working fine around December 9th, shortcuts to applications generally work and start up fine, it only seems to be games and massive multimedia applications, which is starting to make me think it's got something to do with my "switchable graphics".

Thank you for the suggestion about the .exe extension linking Britton30 but it doesn't seem to have worked

EDIT:
Just for clarification, the shortcuts to other applications work fine on the desktop and elsewhere, the shortcuts to games however do not, regardless of whether they're on the desktop or not.

Kaktussoft · 23 Dec 2013

So it's not a shotcut problem at all. Neither is it an exe problem.
Hope you can change the thread title "Problem starting any .exe files on desktop"

Do System Restore and go back to a date PRIOR to December 9th... so BEFORE problems started.

Nsvyas · 23 Dec 2013

Sorry, didn't think my title was misleading due to my previous post, which I shall reiterate here for your convenience, that "shortcuts to applications generally work". I primarily want to deal with my .exe multimedia shortcuts because they aren't working at all, and I wanted to address the rest later due to the fact that they open after 10 or so tries, maybe only 5 if I have a lucky restart of my laptop. I can understand your confusion about the title though, and I hope I have now put your concerns to rest.

As for the system restore option, I don't have any system restore points to go back to at all. I've had a look at the "see all restore points" option too, and fiddled around the control panel but to no avail. Thank you for your suggestion though.

Nsvyas · 23 Dec 2013

Right, so I've been doing a bit of tinkering - turns out that running games in compatibility mode runs them fine...before they unexpectedly crash. Almost positive now that this is a dual graphics card problem but it's never happened to me before and I've run the same games fine, just that now they won't even start. Does anyone know why this might be?

Specs:
AMD Radeon HD 6490M
Amd Radeon(TM) HD 6480G

Both typed exactly how they're found in my device manager list.