explore and open command appear abnormally

[troubleshooting]

when right clicking on any hard disk partition , explore and open command appears as strange charachters but the rest of the menu appears ok and when double clicking on any partition it asks for a suitable program to open the partition, what is happening?

[unlovedwarrior]

what os?  what protections do you have??

[troubleshooting]

thanks for your concern,
operating system is windows xp
protection is norton system work 2005

[unlovedwarrior]

when did this start any new software or hardware installed