When you right-click My Computer, and press Properties, the System Properties dialog box is NOT displayed?
When you right-click a blank area of the desktop, and press Properties, the Display Properties dialog box is NOT displayed?
Many Control Panel applets do NOT work?
When you use Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs, and press Add/Remove Windows Components, an error message is displayed?
These symptoms can be caused by a missing asterisk in a registry data value. To determine if this is the case:
1. Open a CMD prompt.
2. Type ftype exefile and press Enter.
3. The display should look like exefile="%1" %*.
If the * is missing, resolve the problem:
1. Copy / Paste the following to a ExeShellOpen.reg file:
REGEDIT4
\[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\exefile\shell\open\command\]
@="\"%1\" %*"
2. Merge the ExeShellOpen.reg file with your registry.