Jim,

I would strongly recommend you get "Freedom of Association", freeware from www.pcmag.com.

For a quick solution, you have to open an explorer window, select "Tools | Options...", select the page "File types", and eliminate the offending program (the program you don't recognize is probably listed by name there - it might be a program that no longer exists on your computer - at least, I found this to be a frequent problem).

Once you delete the offending association, the next time you double-click on a BMP, Windows will ask you with what program you want to open it with. Select your favorite picture viewer, which might be MS-Paint, Opera, or a commercial picture editor like Corel PhotoPaint.

HTH, Hilmar.

>Sergey and Hilmar,
>
>That's the area of the problem alright (boy did I laze out on that one!) but it seems that I'll just have to live with it!@#!$@#
>
>
>I found that there was no .bmp defined (even though Paint does start up when I d-click on a file with no spaces in the path name). So I went to define one. But it told me that it was already used by some program that I don't recognize. Went to look for other associations with that program and didn't find the program listed.
>
>So I'm in a box. I can't change the thing but I have nothing that I can knowingly delete either.
>
>Thanks both for the help
>Jim