Crazy Mouse

Can anyone tell me why my mouse cursor goes crazy when trying to open .txt files? If I double click to open it with the default text viewer that comes with Windows, the cursor starts flashing repeatedly and the blue 'busy' circle will flash and alternate between the 2 very fast.

If I right click the file and choose edit, it opens fine. If I open with MS Word it opens fine. But if I ever try with the stock viewer, it will go crazy. In order to get it to stop, I must reboot, kill explorer.exe in task manager, or copy the file and delete the one I tried to open. If I delete the file then it clears up but an Explorer window opens.

I'm lost and have searched here and of course Google/Bing! Any ideas???

 

When the issue occurs do you notice anything in event viewer - windows logs- Application or System ?
If you create a new user account, and login with it does the issue persist?
I would also run SFC
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker - Windows 7 Forums

 

Haven't tried any of that honestly. Will check.............

 

OK. I have narrowed it down to something that I don't really know how to fix. I ran the disk scan and no bad system files. Ran a virus scan and nothing. Created a new account as suggested and the issue does not persist.

So I look at my file extension associations and .txt doesn't exist at all-like it is missing. In the 'New account". it was there and associated with notepad. In my account, it is trying to open with explorer.exe for some reason and I don't know how to change it. Anyone?????????

 

And 5 minutes after I wrote this I dug into the registry and found my problem. Somehow there was a UserChoice under file extensions for .txt files and it was explorer.exe that was trying to open. I knew that, just didn't know why and now I do.

.txt also shows now in my file extensions list. I have no idea how it changed, but I probably did it somewhere along the way.