Windows Updated & Now Broken File Associations

I have Windows 7 Home Edition and use the included MS Word and Excel 2010 Starter editions. My computer downloaded and installed Windows updates last night, and this morning when I turned it on, I notice immediately that icons have changed for my Word and Excel files. This quickly leads to the discovery that apparently the file associations are broken, because it asks if I want to us "MS OFFICE" to open either kind of file, and I can't seem to locate the .exe files for Word or Excel to associate these file types with (probably my malfunction). So what can I do?

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Answer

Yaqub K

Hi,

I would suggest you refer the steps mentioned in the following article and check if it helps.

A Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint file does not open because of incorrect file associations

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2464297/en-us

For more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950505/en-us

Important: The above mentioned article contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs.

For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, follow the steps from the following link:

Back up the registry

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Back-up-the-registry

Hope it helps.

Thanks,
Yaqub Khan