W. Explorer Opens Wordpad not Word

[asallwey]

I'm on a new-to-me laptop. The OS is XP, Office is 2000. When I try t
open a doc file with Windows Explorer, WordPad opens instead of Word
And it usually has problems with the file. I run the same softwar
versions on my desktop with no problem. The document opens correctly i
I open with Word. This happens on any Word document. I don't see a
options in Explorer to make the default program for a .doc file Word.

What Happened? Or, more importantly, how to I fix this so Word is th
default program for .doc files?

Thanks!

Ale

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Can you right-click on a file name and get the "Open with" option?
These days, that will get you to a panel showing, or where you can
browse through, all the programs on your system, with a box at the
bottom to check for "Make this the default program for this type of
file." (I don't know how it was back in XP, though.)

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

So it wasn't something that ain't broke but they tried to fix it
anyway!

(But will it still work in Windows 8?)