"any" .exe stopped working

oh yeahhh.. I did speed read your op lol... ok maybe just maybe this is a naughty program causing the issue. which may or not be detected by a virus scanner if its a goodun..

this is lifted directly from ms
To resolve this issue, you can reset the registry settings to their default settings. To do this, follow these steps.
Click the Startbutton and type regedit in the Search box
Right-click Regedit.exe in the returned list and click Run as administrator
Browse to the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe
With .exe selected, right-click (Default) and click Modify…
Change the Value data: to exefile
Browse to and then click on the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile
With exefileselected, right-click (Default) and click Modify…
Change the Value data: to "%1" %*
Browse to and then click on the following registry key:

KEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open
With openselected, right-click (Default) and click Modify…
Change the Value data: to "%1" %*
Close the Registry Editor and restart your PC

Thanks Badger.
Tried the registry reset, it also did not help.

Any More advises

Thanks David. I will try that and let you know.

DavidW7ncus said:

This MS article has some registry entries you could check, and reset, if you see issues with them.
When you run an .exe file on a Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7-based computer, the file may start a different program

If you haven't run Windows Update Cleanup, that's a possibility.
I don't know if it will help with this, but it will remove any updates that have been superseded and aren't needed.
I've used the Cleanup Tool since it came out a few months ago and it hasn't caused any problems for me.
If the Install DVD is Pre SP1, you could also run the cleanup for SP1 backup files.

Step 1 in this tutorial has the link to the latest Win 7 Install ISOs.
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
I would use that if I had to re-install now.
If you end up doing another re-install, this should be the most up-to-date install media needing the fewest Windows Updates after the install.
Having said that, there are some problems with the ISO downloads right now:
Something wrong at Digital River ?

Thanks a lot David! When you run an .exe file on a Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7-based computer, the file may start a different program fixed the issue.
Anyone with same issue can refer to the above link. Thanks a lot to both of you.

One more thing, I will like to add. Issue came up again and this time I found the culprit. It was MSI Afterburner.

Uninstalled it and now all the exe's are running smoothly. Read some articles and found out that the "beta" versions may cause this issue. So, just wanted to tell everyone. Do not use the beta version if you are facing similar issue.

Ciao.

It sounds like the OP was lucky as sometimes you can't recover from these issues.

After I installed SP1, I could never get "Civilization 3" to run.
The only way I found to fix that particular issue (and avoid any future repeats) was to build an XP VM and install all of my old games in it.