Difficulty opening a regular file....

[Adela]

Hello, something strange suddenly happened to my computer and I wonder if anyone came across to similar?

I opened as usual the list of my files, and at the upper right hand side where we get 3 little squares as: "minimize", "maximize" and "delete", I got only 2 squares, a question mark and the delete X. I double-clicked on the file I needed to open...but instead of opening this msg appeared (tried to open several other files with the same result):

<<Microsoft Word needs a converter to display this file correctly. This feature is not currently installed. Would you like to install it now?>>

I clicked YES...but it asked to insert the MS OfficeXP Professional with Front Page disk, and I don't have it because...(another but related story):

A few months ago my computer stopped working so I called a techi. He said instead of fixing my win98 he'll upgrade it to winXP Professional and trusting him I paid him and that's all...But soon after I get frequent popup msgs from MS that I have a non-genuine winXP and that my system is at risk. It didn't help me to question the techi, he denied that it was a non-genuine and refused to come see all the popup msgs. I imagine the above is being done by MS due to my having a non-genuine OS? What do you think?

I'm at the end of the rope spending MORE money on this computer as I'd have to buy another winXP all over again. Thanks so much for any suggestions.

Adela

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

The first part of your post - do you mean Windows Explorer? Actually I am not quite sure what you mean - could you post a screen shot?

The second part - about the [non-]genuine Windows, there is also some malware/spyware that produces such pop-ups. But Microsoft WGA does this as well.

Can you go to http://update.microsoft.com/ (Internet Explorer), and see if it lets you update? This will show you if you have a genuine copy of Windows.

I am not a legal expert, but if you paid your 'techie' to install Windows XP and he installed a pirated copy, then I would either call Microsoft or the police.