Thanks again foolofthehill
did all that you said and all is working fine...so far (touch wood)
i even have all the file associations in LimWire too which had disapeared.
how do you get that back by the way if it gets lost again i.e
when searching mp3's (winamp icon, which i use) comes up or searching video's (WMP) icon apears in the search column.
it always gets lost after a while, when i reinstal it apears for a little while then becomes a generic file icon.