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I recently installed Windows 7 ultimate on a machine. While tweaking it up to my needs and tastes I was installing all sorts of IDEs, browsers, media players ,etc. Meanwhile the START menu was populating the quick link list. So some text file (e.g. a readme file or a doc) got linked over there. I wanted to open it with Notepad++ and set it as default. I right-click the item and did this. On the other side, Windows, interpreted the item as a shortcut object.

So what I did is basically set Windows to open any kind of shortcut with notepad++ which is so wrong.

Part 2

I had a similar bug in Ubuntu ages ago. And the solution was to set Nautilus as default program for some type of files. I decided to do so over here as well but with "Explorer.exe". So I somehow got to set Explorer to open every kind of shortcut. Which is again wrong cause the only thing that happens when I click a shortcut is that an Explorer.exe get launched and then afterwards launches another instance. It is easy to see that and infinite process is given birth.

Pretty funny but very wrong. And you can imagine the importance of not being able to use any shortcut.

Any ideas?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 23 '11 at 18:14

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I assume you have no system restore huh?

Download the lnk reg file here. Double click it. It should fix it immediately.

http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/105/1/File-association-fixes-for-Windows-Vista.html

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Beat me to it. To clairify, in Windows, shortcut files are really small files with a hidden .lnk extension. The extension of .lnk files is among a few that remains hidden even if you specify to unhide extensions in Folder Options. One would think that Windows wouldn't allow the "default action" for certain extensions to be overridden, but that's Windows. – ultrasawblade Jul 23 '11 at 18:49
Odd, when I rightclick shortcut, it does not offer any options to set a default program to handle them . . . – surfasb Jul 23 '11 at 18:51
Thatțs useful information ultrasawblade. Thank you! – Calin Paul Alexandru Jul 23 '11 at 18:55
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