Some malware programs or even dangerous viruses are know to break the default EXE, or other executable (COM, BAT etc.) associations to trick user into launching something malicious, or to simply piss them off so they are unable to start a program with an EXE file extension.
Whilst, experienced computer users can quickly find a solution and deal with this, the less savvy computer user might be lost and unable to launch anything in his own computer.
Luckily, there is easy way how to deal with it, and we will show you how.
Fixing broken executable associations
The team from BleepingComputer made a nice handy program for Windows XP to Windows 8, which quickly restores broken associations for EXE, BAT and COM files. It is called FixExec, and you can downloaded it from this website.
There are several versions available, for each Windows version and in both 32bit and 64bit versions. So download the proper version you need, close all your programs and execute the program. It should repair your broken associations and restore the functionalities of EXE, BAT and COM programs.