Office Enterprise 2007 disabled other programs

S

SteveD

I recently installed Office Enterprise 2007 on my home laptop. On the advice
of my IT guy, I first uninstalled all previous versions of Office, did a Disk
Cleanup, a Defrag, a restart, then installed Office Enterprise 2007.

Now, hundreds (maybe thousands) of files have had their extensions renamed.
Many programs will not run because their ".exe" extensions have been changed
to ".ex_". Also, some ".dll" files have been changed to ".dl_" and similar
changes have happend to other file extensions. This has mostly happened in
the C:\I386 directory, but I think it has happened in some directories for
commercial programs as well.

I've searched the web, and can't find any other references to this
happening. I'd appreciate any words of wisdom.
 
H

Herb Tyson [MVP]

The installed versions of these programs would be in C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office\Office12.

Do you see anything there?

Choose Start - Programs - Microsoft Office. Are there programs listed there?

When you installed, did you accept the setup defaults, or did you do a
custom installation and make some changes?

I would go into Control Panel, find Office 2007, and attempt a repair.
 
S

SteveD

I'm sorry, I didn't explain my problem correctly. I've been so frustrated by
this that I sometimes forget myself.

The programs that are disabled are programs that were on my computer and
working fine prior to my installation of Office 2007. In each case, the
icons for the programs have disappeared from my desktop or taskbar, and the
"exe" files for these program have been changed to "ex_". Also, numerous
"dll" files have been changed to "dl_". I think other extensions have been
changed, too. Almost every file in the C:\I386 directory now has an
extension that ends with an underscore instead of a letter.

Here are some programs that have been altered:
All games in the Start menu (Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire, etc.)
The volume control in the taskbar
A commercial program (National Geographic)
Paint (all .bmp files now are unrecognized)
My Internet Explorer icon has disappeared, but I can still open IE
through shortcuts that are still on my desktop.

There may be more, but I haven't discovered them all yet. However, some
programs, both commercial and pre-installed, continue to work. I also now
have Netscape on my computer, though I don't know why.

I did the default installation, and didn't customize anything. I didn't
monitor the computer closely during the installation.

Thank you.

Steve
 
X

XS11E

SteveD said:
I'm sorry, I didn't explain my problem correctly. I've been so
frustrated by this that I sometimes forget myself.
Click to expand...

Easy to do, don't worry about it. Now that you've posted details maybe
someone can help.
The programs that are disabled are programs that were on my
computer and working fine prior to my installation of Office 2007.
In each case, the icons for the programs have disappeared from my
desktop or taskbar, and the "exe" files for these program have
been changed to "ex_". Also, numerous "dll" files have been
changed to "dl_". I think other extensions have been changed,
too. Almost every file in the C:\I386 directory now has an
extension that ends with an underscore instead of a letter.

Here are some programs that have been altered:
All games in the Start menu (Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire,
etc.) The volume control in the taskbar
A commercial program (National Geographic)
Paint (all .bmp files now are unrecognized)
My Internet Explorer icon has disappeared, but I can still
open IE
through shortcuts that are still on my desktop.

There may be more, but I haven't discovered them all yet.
However, some programs, both commercial and pre-installed,
continue to work. I also now have Netscape on my computer, though
I don't know why.

I did the default installation, and didn't customize anything. I
didn't monitor the computer closely during the installation.
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like the problem might be a malware infection, open
Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options and delete Temporary
Files, History and Cookes, then update your virus scanner, run a virus
scan, run Adaware, run Spybot S&D (Google will find them for you) and
see what turns up.
 
H

Herb Tyson [MVP]

Runnable programs--other than system programs--are found in the Program
Files folder. System programs, for the most part, are found the Windows
folder and in several of its subfolders.

I don't even have a C:\I386 folder. Names ending in an underscore usually
indicate a compressed file. As explained here,
http://www.andybrain.com/archive/mb/i386-folder.htm, the i386 folder--if it
exists--"is used to install, repair, modify, update, and rebuild Windows."
Your programs wouldn't actually run from that folder. Having files in that
folder likely speeds up certain kinds of maintenance functions, but files
you see there are nothing to worry about.

So, the question for you is, are just the shortcuts to those programs messed
up, or are the underlying executable programs messed up as well?

For example, the Minesweeper typically would be found here:

ProgramFiles\Microsoft Games\Minesweeper\Minesweeper.exe

Is that file still there? If you navigate to it using Windows Explorer, can
you still run it?

It sounds like SOMETHING has done a number on Windows. The questions are
WHAT HAPPENED? and CAN IT BE FIXED? If I were in your situation, I would
immediately try to see if there were a recovery point from just before the
"incident" and see if going back to that point restores things to what they
were previously.


--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com
 
Top