64-bit Vista, bringing up printer dialog instead of browser

My nephew let some other people play computer games on his Vista Home Premium 64-bit computer.

Later, when he ran one computer game, it kept asking for his key to install MS Word. I removed MS Word from his computer, along with the MS office registration assistant.

Now, when I click on a web site shortcut, as a desktop icon, it loads the printer requestor. Not the browser.

We can run the browser, and go to the web site. But not from desktop link.

I checked his file associations. html is set for his browser, which is IE. I even set .com, which is in his file associations list already, to pull up Internet Explorer. Click on the icon, the printer requestor still comes up.

Any suggestions ?

Thanks !

Jim,
Have you thought of deleting the short cut and making a new one?
Probably just needs to be deleted and refreshed. Be sure to boot after delete.

Uninstalled the game. Reinstalled from fresh download.

Deleted desktop icons.

Even added site to favorites, made short cut of faveorite to desktop.

Same behaviour.

Scanned with Malwarebytes, made sure definitions updated, got rid of one trojan something like 'ad.ware'.

I found his hard drive had 2 partitions. D: drive has msprogram.temp which I removed.

And one with a bunch of 160-170kb files in it called something like urBuck or ubUreck something like that. I deleted those to.

Rebooted at least twice in there.

I may be wrong with this, but heres my guess.
There may be a problem with the registry. A System restore from before any problems, should do the trick.
I checked my computer, open with, and for desktop its .dsklnk. and it give the program as unknown, so no help there.

I'm not sure how far back his computer problem goes, could be last year.

This is not a fix for registry and doubt if it will help in this situation, but try an SFC.
Registry cannot be reset, unless previously saved or with restore.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

Oh, you mean: /sfc scannow ?

Yes, I left you a tutorial.

Just FYI it's sfc /scannow NOT /sfc scannow. Just wanted to make sure you didn't start screaming at you broken computer because of a typo

And is it only that one shortcut that pulls up your printer config, or is it every shortcut? because if it's every shortcut a quick program to fix your file associations should do the trick, I can point you to one. If it's just that one shortcut... well, that another problem haha.

Well, we only tried the one short cut as that is what my nephew was concerned about and I was very tired.

And I had been playing Everquest earlier, and I'm used to typing / to get to the chat window.

Argh.

Got his admin account created.

sfc /scannow stops at 50 percent done.

Says Windows Resource Protection stopped it. Wnidows Help has nothing by that phrase. I installed AVG Free last week. But no idea what that message about WRP means.

I have to get up before sunrise so I am off to get some sleep.

I think someone he roomed with added a bunch of files to the D: partition.

Same computer as mine, except 64-bit.

His still has 2 partitions, C:\ and D:\

I got rid of my D" and using hard drive management, added the room to my C:\.

Could that help his problems ? Get rid of any hidden files his former roomie put on his computer ?

Thanks !

somewhat argued with me. But D:\ is now gone.

While defender was off, real-time protection was evidently still running. So I turned on Defender, and turned off realtime-protection.

Turned Defender off and started up sfc /scannow from admin account.

sfc /scannow still stops at 50 percent, says windows resopurce protection is on.

tried it in safe mode, no networking.

Still stops at 50 percent. sfc /scannow does go faster though.

Sigh. Still no joy. sfc /scannow not blocked at work, blocked at home. So there must be a way to turn off Windows Resource Protection.

Any info on how to do this ?

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, this might be the answer to all your problems (at least with sfc) How to Fix "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service" Error When Running SFC in Windows 7 and Vista - The Winhelponline Blog

Also, a quick look at this SFC problem - "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service" might give you some further info if that doesn't fix it.

I'll check those, but sfc does start. It goes to 50 percent done and stops.

I read all the posts in those two links, doesn't seem applicable.