When you select programs from the Start menu or shortcuts nothing happens, the
“Open with” dialog box is displayed or a specific program runs. The .lnk
association is either missing, incorrect or corrupted. Because all shortcuts and
Program Menu items are files with a .lnk extension, selecting one either brings
up the “Open with” dialog box, a specific application such as Notepad.exe or
Wordpad.exe or doesn’t do anything. You can correct this by either restoring the
registry key from another working computer or manually replacing the registry
key. See : Q172053
