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sunhux
 asked on

Every executable on my Win 7's Desktop got associated with Notepad

I was opening a zipped putty file sent by a colleague who suggested to me to use
Notepad to open after unzipping.

I don't know what I've clicked or selected: now every single executables (MS outlook,
Chrome, IE, Google Docs, 7zip, putty, Broadband on Mobile, etc) are showing Notepad
icons & when I double-click on them, Notepad edits those executables & show their
contents (often containing garbage characters).

What can I do to "de-associate" the Notepad associations?

I'm on Win 7 Professional x64
Windows OSMicrosoft Legacy OSOffice Productivity

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Last Comment
John

8/22/2022 - Mon
John

It appears your colleague sent you malware. Putty works just fine. I use it.

Run your own antivirus application and do a full scan. Follow this by a scan using Malwarebytes.

When complete, open an admin command prompt and run SFC /SCANNOW. Allow to complete. Close out and now shut down the computer.

Start back up and test. Any improvement?
SOLUTION
John

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SOLUTION
Lior Karasenti

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
☠ MASQ ☠

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sunhux

ASKER
For sure it's not a virus because my laptop is up-to-date with Officescan AV
& Malwarebytes scan did not fix it.

Lior's utility is in a non-English language but I ran the .scr anyway & selected
.exe to restore (ie I click "Restaurer") & it actually edit using notepad the
file which shows up a garbaged file.

I've also tab to the button "Restaurer" & press <Space> to select it & it
edits the file again, showing a garbaged file
sunhux

ASKER
Have also downloaded & run MASQ's default_EXE.reg but it did not restore back
the icons on the Desktop too : still doing "notepad of the file", showing garbage.

Do I need to reboot after running the above tools?  I'll try it tomorrow as it's
midnight now my time
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sunhux

ASKER
After running Lior n defaultreg.exe, I also do a cold reboot of the laptop, still seeing all Desktop icons as Notepad icon n clicking any one of them wud edit them using Notepad which gives garbage content.   Wat can I do next?
SOLUTION
John

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SOLUTION
☠ MASQ ☠

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sunhux

ASKER
C:\Users\sunhux\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\JumpListIcons

Our laptop support chap renamed away the above, rebooted the OS & voila, the
icons are all back to what it was prior to the 'putty' incident.  Was told Win 7 will
recreate the above if it finds it missing & the newly created JumpListIcons restores it

Did not try "System Restore"
John

Thanks for the update!
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