I shut down my computer as normal, everything was working fine, including MS Paint. On booting an hour or so later MS Paint had vanished - not in Accessories, the Taskbar, or in the program folders. Can someone please advise:
1 What might have happened;
2 How I can find the missing program; and
3 Is is possible to download a clean version of MS Paint from a reputable website? If so, which one? TIA
Hi Tharwatime, System Restore may be able to restore ms paint from the link below.
System Restore
Hi Tharwatime,
link for download,
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...download-paint
NO program should just dissappear!
run an AV scan just to be on the safe side, and back that up with a Malwarbytes scan.
Roy
Hi Tharwatime,
what you was doing before shutting down your PC? For the missing Paint, System Restore is the best option, don't download Paint or any MS program in case of disappear. If you have restore point before this happened, use it.
Do you have another program that does what Windows 7 Paint does?
If you do it could be set as Default instead of 'Paint'.
Such a program might of removed the link to Windows 7 Paint.
I also agree with Roy. I would verify that the system is NOT infected.
I would do this first. A Restore Point that is infected will not be of help.
Jack
You may have done something without noticing.
Search C: for mspaint.exe. The copy normally used should live in C\windows\system32 but on my PCs there is also a copy in
C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-mspaint_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_ea12784c0842bfc1
If it was me I'd want to know what happened and I'd definitely be checking for malware just in case.
Regardless I'd do a system image restore provided you have made system images. You could try a straight system restore as suggested if you don't have any signs of malware.
Thanks for the above advice. I have very high firewall and AV protection, and have run an AV, nothing.
I was looking at images that I had last accessed in MS Paint, and I was amazed to see MS Paint open. I saved the screen shot below in MS Paint. This shows that the program is not where it should be but the property window shows that it is. I cannot understand this!
I have another program, IrfanView, that can be used for images.
Hi Everybody, In my pc mspaint is located under C:/Windows, SystemWOW64, have to scroll down a fair
way and it just says mspaint.
That right hand side screenshot is showing the properties of the >>shortcut<<
NOT paint in its own right, its distinguished by the shortcut arrow-up
silly question have your searched for mspaint.exe
NOTE
left hand screenshot your looking in the wrong place
mspaint is way down from there and has APPLICATION as its description type, not file folder
Roy
Last edited by torchwood; 10 Jul 2017 at 19:09.
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