Registry without regedit? (W2K)

[tronsweep]

My IE was opening to [censored] pages, so I went into the registry and found all instances of the offender "http://.NKVD.US" and replaced it with "http://aol.com".

I even went so far as to change the 'default' value of [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main] default page URL= to "http://aol.com"

Now when I attempt to open any .exe, or .com files, IE opens and puts "http://aol.com" in front of the .exe filename, thus causing the DNS ERROR message for a page not found.

Have already tried renaming regedit.exe to regedit.com to no avail. Even explored downloading a script editor in order to script the changes to the registry, but of course the zip file contains the .exe to open it. Have also modified the backup of the registry I made BEFORE the change and renamed it to backup.reg, but of course the .reg file (placed on desktop and double clicked) needs regedit.exe in order to execute. Used to be able to go to Control Panel\System and findthe registry there, but even THAT requires an exe for execution.

How do I get around this and force the registry to open?

Thanks for listening. Please help.

[dtriplet]

from a command line, create a copy of regedit.exe as regedit.bat and double-click the "bat" file in explorer. This gets you back into regedit.

Then check (and correct) these values:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe]
@="exefile"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.com]
@="comfile"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*" (typed manually without outer quotes and slashes)
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\comfile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*" (typed manually without outer quotes and slashes)

This corrects your exe and com file handling. Then go update and run your virus scanner. You were hit by a virus that chains itself into every program run on your computer.

ZC