Question from Kim:  Everything was working fine until this morning, but now every time I click on a file it tries to open in Notepad. I can’t open anything! Please help??? My computer has Windows 7 if that matters. Thanks!!

Rick’s answer:  It sounds like your file associations have gotten messed up Kim. Your PC’s Windows installation associates virtually all common file types with a specific application that it uses to open that file by default whenever you click on it.

For example, files with the .doc extension are usually opened with Microsoft Word while .xls files typically open in Excel. There are literally dozens of other file types with different extensions, and Windows looks at the extension to decide which program it should use to open that file by default. [Read more…]