Hi Al

>See if the .LNK extension is in the list, with its handler being NotePad.

I had done that yesterday before posting and have reconfirmed this, it is not. In any case if it was the same LNKs would not have started after the bootup was complete, now would any other. I have started to observe this behavior after I had installed the bluetooth driver but I am not sure if that was the culprit because these same LNKs were working fine and only the bluetooth LNK was being opened in the notepad till yesterday, but this is only a bootup thing then things seem to settle down again.

Thanks.