Silkcat needs tech support, will reward

[Silkcat]

Hey out there, I need a bit of E-semi-related tech support and maybe I can reward someone with some writing or such. :)

I usually would like to consider myself technical enough to solve these kind of things myself, but no luck.

Env: Windows 7 Home Edition
Error: C:\Windows\System32\mspaint.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

Sure enough, if I look at it with the normal file browser it is 0 kb.
However, if I'm in a Save As dialog and I browse over to that subdirectory I see it is over 6MB.  And while in that dialog I can right-click Open and MSPaint fires up quite happily and works.
If I do the Save As thing, right-click copy, paste to desktop (as file, not shortcut) then that pasted copy goes back to failing.
If I do the Save As thing, right-click copy shortcut, paste to desktop, same problem.

Weird enough for ya?

[DudelRok]

If something like that happened on my PC I'd either look for a new Paint program look-a-like or try and find another mspaint.exe 'cause it sounds like corrupted data.

Though you might wanna check the properties of the shortcuts you are creating, to see if they are the same as the properties of the actual exe. Making sure the actual mspaint.exe is in the System32 folder, for example.

A common shortcut error with that kind of stuff, though, is that the drive isn't labeled properly. So instead of C, a lot of people have their stuff and D.

I'd suggest trying to Run (Win+R) C:\Windows\System32\mspaint.exe to see if it really is or isn't a valid application. If paint doesn't open after you do that, it isn't where it is supposed to be.

I'm not a Win7 user, but this is all "Has worked since Win 99" knowledge.

[MasterMischief]

The first thing I would suspect is a virus that has corrupted your mspaint.exe.  I would run a virus scan first and, as noted above, make sure it is in the right place for your OS.

[Oniya]

Do you have the Windows CD or the *.cab files available to you?  You might want to simply remove MS Paint and reinstall it.

To search for a file in your .cab folders, use Find all Files (or Search, depending on your OS), type *.cab in the "Named" line and the name of the file you are looking for in the line "Containing Text". In the "Look in" line if you are using the Windows CD you enter the address of your CD-ROM drive, or C:\ if you have the Windows\Options\Cabs folder on your hard drive.

[Enmuro]

Might also suggest scanning for a hard drive error. It's something easy that could fix the issue if it is that.

Http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors   

[Silkcat]

So I copied Paint from a Win7 box at home, so at least I have that functional part now.  I also have some windows updates that had been failing so last night I got through most of those using a Windows Updater thing on Microsoft's Answers site.  McAfee and the Spyware thing I have both seem happy other than complaining about some of the cookies which it considers bad as trackers, so I got rid of those too.

I'll try the hard drive scanner if the next bit fails.

Thanks for the advice so far, everyone!