Computer help needed · Aussieveedubbers

Bizarre · 13 Mar 2006, 5:46 pm

Some one has emailed me three files

They have convienently changed the name of them to include the date.
So they now have a ".06" in their name :jesus

I have guessed they were word files and changed them back and can read them

the 3rd has ".dat" after it??

Any ideas what sort of file it is???

modulus · 13 Mar 2006, 5:55 pm

File extensions don't mean much; they certainly don't 'force' the files to act in a particular manner.

The '.dat' extension is sometimes used to denote 'data', but unless you know the sender and were expecting the file, you should treat it as a virus.

Bizarre · 13 Mar 2006, 6:51 pm

I know the sender

Just cant get onto them.
The files have been changed to those "generic" file symbols so that when you click on them it just says "what application do you want to open it with"

Will just wait for the sender to answer

Just trying to get a jump on it

thanks anyway

EgeWorks · 13 Mar 2006, 7:59 pm

.dat usually means raw data for some kind of program to read. You can try and open it in notepad to see if it makes any sense but otherwise it's hard to know as it's a commonly used extension in many programs.

crewcabconnection · 13 Mar 2006, 9:53 pm

.dat is usually some attachment such as a logo or background burried in the email body, esp if its a graphical email not plain text. Probably. Get rid of the full point (dot) (.) and rename it, if it's a pic .jpg or .gif or .bmp being the logical ones, or .doc or .xls etc. The suffix after the dot is the mime type you need to open it.

Windoze is still DOS despite the smoke and mirror. Or just buy a Mac which is smart enough to figure it out on it's own.

If you're making pics or files to send about the net, just avoid using dots and slashes, and spaces - use and underscore_to_link_names or a hypen-to-link-names. PCS don't like spaces on the net when running Windoze.

Cheers

EgeWorks · 14 Mar 2006, 8:20 am

Or just buy a Mac which is smart enough to figure it out on it's own.

I'm sure buying a new computer is the answer to this problem...

modulus · 14 Mar 2006, 8:37 am

crewcabconnection wrote:...Get rid of the full point (dot) (.) and rename it, if it's a pic .jpg or [...] or .doc or .xls etc. ...
Cheers

When you do this (renaming a .dat file to a .doc file received by email) you help virus-composers circumvent virus-checkers; it may be a Word macro virus which, by your actions, has now escaped inspection as such. It's pretty clear that the original poster is not, shall we say, deeply au fait with the inner workings of PCs, which is fine, but as such should be discouraged from trying to help the anti-social.

Just ask the original sender to re-send it in its original form; how hard is that?

hth