Dat files have a file association, icon for another installed program.

Hi all,

This week, while servicing the folks PC, I noticed that the icon for Nero 6
Media player (green circle with a silver > arrow), has made itself the
default icon for all of their systems *.dat files. On doing a file search
for *.dat file type - Search listed about 375 dat files that report
themselves being a nero mediaplayer media file.

While it appears harmless enough I suppose; their PC runs fine - has anyone
else here encountered a similar problem with Nero - or other programs doing
this? If so, is there a solution or work around to correct the problem or
is it a bug within file type associations?

Don't worry about it. It isn't a bug with file associations, it's just
that Nero likes to take the .dat file association as its own. There are
other programs as well as some of the registry files that also use files
with .dat extensions but it doesn't bother these other programs that
Nero thinks it should be the default application for the files.

John

C J. wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This week, while servicing the folks PC, I noticed that the icon for Nero 6
> Media player (green circle with a silver > arrow), has made itself the
> default icon for all of their systems *.dat files. On doing a file search
> for *.dat file type - Search listed about 375 dat files that report
> themselves being a nero mediaplayer media file.
>
> While it appears harmless enough I suppose; their PC runs fine - has anyone
> else here encountered a similar problem with Nero - or other programs doing
> this? If so, is there a solution or work around to correct the problem or
> is it a bug within file type associations?
>
>
>

"C J." <no.reply@example.invalid> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>This week, while servicing the folks PC, I noticed that the icon for Nero 6
>Media player (green circle with a silver > arrow), has made itself the
>default icon for all of their systems *.dat files. On doing a file search
>for *.dat file type - Search listed about 375 dat files that report
>themselves being a nero mediaplayer media file.

Lots of apps use the *.dat extension for extremely diverse file types.
It's pretty dumb (IMHO) for one app to associate itself with them.

>While it appears harmless enough I suppose; their PC runs fine - has anyone
>else here encountered a similar problem with Nero - or other programs doing
>this? If so, is there a solution or work around to correct the problem or
>is it a bug within file type associations?

Generally, the user doesn't directly mess with an application's "dat"
files. You open the app, and it reads the files it needs, you don't
double-click a "dat" file. Maybe that's not true for Nero, I don't
know. The fact that Nero has grabbed that association will not affect
any other app that uses *.dat files in the manner I described. The
association only governs what happens when the file is double-clicked,
or opened automatically by an app that knows nothing about it.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@bls.gov
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt