Thank you very much, Madman, and thank you all for the greetings/welcome. Sorry for the late response, I just got back from spending a weekend in Montreal. Hope all of you enjoyed your weekends, too. :-)
More than likely, I poorly expressed myself when I described the problem I started encountering a couple of days ago, after doing a thorough (i.e. excessive...) cleanup of my hard drive. So, I will try to be more precise. Please bear with me. My *.txt association is with Notepad. I have verified it (deleted it and re-created it, also): that, is likely not the issue. The issue is that all my software *.lnk open up in Notepad, either if there are located on my desktop or in my start menu. For example, I have my HP Director link on my desktop: when I click on it, Notepad opens the command. I have to, instead, go to the pertinent *.exe file (under Program Files, etc...), and double-click on it to open the program up. Something went very wrong somewhere, and I was wondering if there was a simple way to revert everything back to the (corresponding) default setting(s). I have never encountered anything like that. If it is something obvious or silly that I can't seem to grasp, please do go ahead and embarass me :-). Thank you very much once again.