"How do you want to open this aep. file?" Project not opening

A popup asking which app i want to use to open my project keeps showing up.

I'd copied a project from a USB that'd I'd been working on another computer and had then tried to open it on this new pc, but it kept crashing immediately after opening the project. 

Then a day or two later, after starting the project from scracth on the new pc, all my aep files lost their AE icon, instead showing the white file icon as seen in the screenshots here.

I then tried opening any of them. They showed this popup after double clicking or hitting "open with", to which i hit "OK", but to no avail. It just flickers once and the popup remains.

I am able to open the project from within after effects in my "recent" log. But this is not satisfactory.

Someone please help. Should I try reinstall ae? Is it an issue that I installed it into my D drive instead of my C drive? Could I have corrupted the program after copying and pasting plugins from a USB? I manually udated my graphics drivers the other day too..