OK...my son's karate instructor called me, 2nd time he's had this happen.

All of his file associations are missing and therefore he cannot launch any applications except Mozilla.....very weird. I was able to direct him to a couple of online scans for trojans and viruses by doing an end-around to get his IE working (needed activex for the online scans). The scans found a couple of trojans and 4 viruses, cleaned them up but the system is still screwed....I've been unable to get his files re-associated with applications (I hate trying to do crap like this over the phone).

Dell 2.4 P4
512 megs
60 gig
XP Home

The first time this happened Dell support had him reinstall Windows and offered him no explanation of what happened. I hate the thought of having him spend 2 hours on the phone with Dell almost as much as I hate the thought of going over and doing the reinstall myself. Any of you folks have any suggestions for old Al to try out before I take a sledgehammer to his box???