My MS Paint program has stopped working in my Windows Vista computer. It is probably coincidence, but the only change to my computer between the last time mspaint worked and when it stopped working was the installation of an updated sound card driver. Oh, and the installation of a utility to allow unzipping the *.rar file that the driver came packaged in.

When I tried to use mspaint tonight, clicking on the shortcut changed the cursor to an hourglass for about seven seconds, then back to the regular cursor arrow.

I went to C:\Windows\System32 and clicked on the mspaint.exe program directly, and the program opened. I closed the program, right-clicked the mspaint.exe program and created a new shortcut. I clicked it, and the program ran. After that, nothing I could do would make the program run again, either through the shortcut or trying to run it directly. I borrowed a copy of the program from Tony Fabris, it wouldn't run. I downloaded an older version of the program from the internet, and it ran... once and then never again.

No, I got it to run one more time by bringing up the "Run" applet and telling it to run mspaint. The program opened right up once but not again after that.

I ran my Registry Patrol registry cleaner program, it made no difference.

I ran virus scan (AVG Pro, database updated 90 minutes ago), it says the computer is clean.

What is going on here? Why will the same program open up one time from three different prompts (shortcut; direct executable; Run filename) and then never again? How can I get my mspaint.exe program to run again?

tanstaafl.