i have a laptop and i noticed last night when i got home from work when i turned it on most of the icons  on the desk top i guess you call it are not lit   up .and when i click on the non light icons like Mozilla FireFox  for example which i i use allot, a message from windows pops  ups and says WINDOWS CANNOT OPEN THIS FILE,TO OPEN THIS FILE WINDOWS NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT PROGRAM CREATED IT ,WINDOWS CAN GO ON LINE TO LOOK IT UP Automatically  OR YOU CAN Manually SELECT FROM A LIST OF PROGRAMS ON YOURE COMPUTER.when i try the windows automatically way  it pretty much tells you to do it manually . i have no idea how to do this manually im not good on computers. now if i click on the start button i see Mozilla there and if i click on it ,it opens up so i can get on line ,but thru the desk top icons nothing but this windows message appears no matter what  non lit icon i press on. is this some kind of virus ? the guy that set this up for me has a couple virus icons on here  but they are some of the non lit icons  that wont work .first i wanted to warn you that I'm not a computer person so I'm hoping the solution somebody is an easy one. thanks guys.

i havent used a windows computer in a while (mac's rock) but try right clicking the program in the start menu and then click create shortcut or send to desktop. try the new icon.

Right click on the darkened icon and hit Properties. Look under the shortcut tab. You should see something called target with a file location. That's the program the icon is tied to. Go to the file location and see if the program is still there.  If its not you may need to do a search for it.  After you find it just make a new shortcut and drag it to your desktop.

If your running XP you might want to try system restore.  START, control panel, system, system restore.  Pick a restore point from t he calendar, files won't be lost.

Yep def try a restore a lot of times windows screws up and causes stupid conflicts. I am a network admin for my real job when im not fishing lol. Try the system restore function if that doesn't work then I would say back up and information and data you need to an external hd a flash drive or cd / dvd and then do a full system restore. You should have the option when you start your computer for this or it came with some cd's.

Def when you are thinking on getting a new computer if you dont want any of these nuisances get a mac. They are great, never get any virus's and always run top notch.

You can PM me if you would like and I will try and help you out.