Windoze Shortcuts

[Jonathan Hutchins]

Jim, I think you may be looking at reinstallation here anyway, but there are
some things you can try.

It sounds like your user profile has become corrupted to the point where
it's not finding the system directory, and possibly other paths.  I would
try logging in to the machine with a different account.  That would, of
course, require knowing another valid username and password.  If that works,
delete your profile from winntprofiles.

There are methods to recover a corrupted NT system, but they're usually not
worth the trouble unless it's a server.  No backups, I presume?  If you have
the disk space, you can try doing a new install to a non-standard directory,
then editing the boot.ini to point back to the original directory once you
get things fixed.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Herrmann [mailto:b3d at kc.rr.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 11:24 PM
> To: KC Linux User Group
> Subject: Windoze Shortcuts
> 
> 
> This is sort of off topic, but i have a problem with my Win 
> NT 4 Compaq 
> Laptop machine at work that the Windows weenies can't solve.  
> I present 
> this here because the problem first reared it's head when I 
> was at the 
> LUG meeting Tuesday night, and you guys have a wide variety 
> of knowledge 
> and skills.  Here's the deal.
> 
> My shortcuts stopped working.  This means most things on the desktop 
> don't work, and nothing in the start menu works.  I can still launch 
> programs from explorer and the run... window.  The first 
> manifestation 
> was at the meeting when I booted the laptop to make a boot 
> floppy.  At 
> that time I noticed the items in the Startup folder came up with the 
> "Open With.." window.  The next day, I noticed the real extent of the 
> problem, in that nothing could launch.  I never realized how 
> important 
> shortcuts were to Windoze ease of use.  I can't get to a 
> command prompt 
> with out the Run.. box.
> 
> Things I have looked at and or tried to fix this include downloading 
> Powertoys and using TweakUI to try to fix the icons.  No 
> luck.  I looked 
> at the registry and compared it to other machines that work, 
> and I can 
> see no difference for the .lnk extension.  I tried deleting 
> and reading 
>   the .lnk extension in the View Options->File Types dialog.  
> This made 
> things worse, as then the icons turned into the default icon. 
>  We tried 
> deleting my profile, which had no effect.  This problem affects all 
> users on this machine.
> 
> Any ideas?  The solution the PC guys have is to nuke my drive and lay 
> down a new image.  I really don't want to do this if I can help it. 
> Thanks for any suggestions you might have.
> 
> I hate windows more each day,
> Jim
> 
> --
> Listen to KC Blues great Fast Johnny Ricker at 
http://mp3.com/fastjohnny