Everything Opening With Excel

I am running Windows XP. I went to the Properties on the Start Menu and decided to switch from Classic Start Menu to the newer version. In the list of programs on the new Start menu was EXCEL.EXE, but the icon was wrong and when I clicked on it, it couldn't find Excel. I went to the properties of the link and changed EXCEL.EXE to Excel. It still not working, I deleted the link.

Now whenever I click on an icon on my desktop, the system tries to open it with Excel. Apparently the change screwed something up, but I do not know how to get back to where I was before.

Can anyone help with this? I am guessing that somewhere there is something I can do to get it working again. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers -

george

Update -

Files that are associated with programs are working properly - I can click on a .txt file and the file opens with Wordpad. However, any icon that calls a program is trying to be opened by Excel.

Cheers -

george