Open With associations gone from Context menu

[mindfix]

Newbie to forum....

i am about to go batty - i have an xp pro, corporate version that suddenly lost all the "open with' associations. i have checked the registry settings against another system with almost similar software and cannot find anything that might cause it.

however, for a typical html file, when you would right click on it the context menu would display that you could choose a number of programs such as homesite, dreamweaver, etc. now, it just shows the words "OPEN WITH" and a flyout that only has the words "open with" and when you try to click on that it does nothing--absolutely zero.

i am about to pull my hair out since we decided to reformat the machine only a few days ago and then all of a sudden the issue is back.

any help or any direction to et help is seriously appreciated.