Files on desktop won’t open

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I have a user who saves files directly to her desktop – not a lot.. maybe 20. They are Word, Excel, PDF files. Without exception, when she tries to open the file on the desktop, her computer hangs and we have to End Task. However she can open the same files if she launches the application first and uses File, Open and selects the file (in the Desktop directory). What would cause this? I tried reinstalling Office, but it’s also happening when she opens pdf files.

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Remember that these ICONS on the desk top eats up more of the 64k of resources.
How many, total icons, does this user have on the desktop?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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I’d say she has about 30 icons, about 1/2 of which are shortcuts and the rest are files or programs.

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Have you tried reducing the tally?

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The desktop is NOT the best place to save files. Not only will clutter up the desktop but will eat up one’s resources real fast, which is the cause of a lot of problems.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Have you tried running CHKDISK on the hard drive? It sounds to me like the Desktop directory may be corrupted.

If you navigate to the Desktop directory using Windows Explorer and then double click on one of those files what happens? If that also hangs, then most likely the file associations in the registry are corrupted. The only way I know to clean that up is a clean install of Windows.

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