so this guy is installin office on his vista business edition laptop ( DELL vostro 1500 ) then it sticks and all of a sudden

NOw everything opens in a txt note pad file in an unreadible form !!

u try to launch command prompt same thing , system restore , IE, everything launches in notepad , looks similar to when u change an .exe file to .txt




ANy body here can tell me what is possible going on

Obviously something went very wrong with the install. Sometimes it's just better not trying to fix an install gone bad, and just starting clean.

Does it happen in safe mode? (I assume it will but its worth a shot)

yes it happens in dafe mode , we end up fresh installin the os but now the wireless lan drivers from the manufacturer cd doesnt work ..... this is a new cd by the way .. the recovery partition still remains , i was wondering if there is a way to boot up an install of it , it will solve the problems with the drivers

Since the recovery partition is intact, you will be able to start a recovery from it by selecting the appropriate entry in the BIOS. Good luck by the way.

I've experienced this behaviour only once before. But it was not from a broken install, it was when I worked at college and the computer had gotten a virus. The virus used a wrapper for all files to open through notepad instead of its designated application handler, in an effort to not allow you to clean the system. We ended up reimaging that computer in order to fix it.