After I installed Microsoft`s Monad Shell beta 3, when I try to run cmd it says "cmd is not a valid win32 application". If I run cmd.exe it works. This happens to all exe`s on my computer. After I uninstall Monad Shell, the problem remains. The problem is that all my batch files refuse to work now. Any ideas how can I fix this ?

The cmd file must be corrupt, try and get it of your XP cd, it may be named cmd.ex_ , just run a search on the xp cd for cmd you should find it. If it is ex_ then you need to rename the extension to something like rar or zip then extract the file because obviously you cant use the dos based expand program.

Sounds like it may have changed a few settings in your registry. This regfile should put all the settings for cmd, bat and exe files back to the original settings.

Click to view attachment

Thanx ScubaSteve. Tried your reg and still have the problem. Any exe that I run from Start\Run doesn`t work if I don`t provide the extension.
ex:
cmd.exe works
cmd doesn`t

ever heard of system restore

Open ur System32 folder located at your windows folder, you should find 2 CMD files, (cmd.exe, cmd.com), that cmd.com shouldnt be there, just delete it with brave heart try it now

* this in case only cmd is not working at run *

Hi guys,

Just wanted to say thanks to NaelAmer for that solution. This problem has been bugging me for months. Even up reloading XP just to get over it - in my case it was Regedit as well as CMD that wouldn't work.

Major bottomer!

Anyway just as you suggested, had a look in system32 and indeed there were 5 or 6 zero-byte .com files (including ping and tracert). Knock them off and all is well.

Any ideas what might have caused this?? After reloading XP the problem was resolved (obviously) but then just seemed to pop back by magic.

Thanks again,

Gwerjo

dude if you have a cmd.com in ur system32 then you will most likely have spyware on your pc. i would suggest you run spybot, adware and trendmicros online housecall antivirus scanner immediately.

thanks a lot

just noticed this thread and i was going to suggest looking for 0 byte files in system32 and also seeing if the sys32 directory was hidden, but it seems you found them.
iv seen this before and as far as i rememeber it was nothing to do with corrupt files and was a virus of somesort, could just be coincidence that you installed that theme at the same time, or the theme itself may have had some sort of malware in it.
just out of interest were you running anti-virus at the time?

The problem seems to be related to the environment variable PATHEXT not being set. It should look like

PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH

Try this: SETX -m PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH

exit that command prompt, and restart another one. See if the problem still happens.

W