Question : Loosing File Association.....

Got an XP system that a friend uses to do Quickbooks and Quicken on.

He asked me to fix his pc before because NONE of his icons would work.  The file association was lost.  After many Regedit changes we got the system running  (system restore would not work).

Once we got it up, I scanned for viruses and spyware/male ware. I could not find anything.

I gave it back to here.  A few months went by and it has done it again.  The windows system restore would not work.  I borrowed a copy of EDR Commander and booted from the cd. I could not find any corrupted files... I did the system restore thought the EDR commander and all seems fine again.

I am trying to avoid a reformat and install as she bought a LOT of programs online and no longer has her keys...    

Any help on this would be nice.

Answer : Loosing File Association.....

You can always go into windows explorer and click tools, folder options, file types and manualy create or re-create the file associations.  But it is my firm belief that you have some malware that is eluding detection on this box.  Turn off system restore, UNinstall your AV and Spyware detection software, hack the registry to remove references to the aforementioned software then reboot.  Reinstall AV and spyware detection software and update the signatures.  Then boot into safe mode and run full scans with AV and Spyware detection software.