[GRLUG] save hidden files in windows

[Michael Mol]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 3:03 PM, Mike Williams <knightperson at zuzax.com> wrote:
> On 07/15/2011 02:53 PM, Michael Mol wrote:
>>
>> Ah. Windows Explorer often tries too hard to protect users from
>> themselves. There's settings somewhere to fix some of that, but I
>> don't remember off-hand where they are. The version of Windows in use
>> may be a factor, too. I don't know.
>
> That would be the dreaded "hide extensions for registered file types" or
> some such. It's one of the 20 or so changes you can make in Folder-options
> and one of about four that I always change immediately after installing
> Windows.
>
> It's not quite as bad as it used to be, though. Modern Windows (7 and Vista
> at least) fairly often look at the first few bytes of the file itself to
> identify it rather than blindly trusting the extension. Various trojans used
> to mess with Explorer by convincing naive users to open what they thought
> was "harmless.txt" when it was actually "harmless.txt.exe".

Windows Vista and 7 still depend on the "extension" to determine file
type. Some file types include metadata about their content, which it
can use to be more precise. (Mostly things like multimedia, and mostly
for the context of extracting metadata)


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