Open with

Click the program you want to use to open this file with.I get this quite often when I am opening or installing a program. How do I know what program to use? I am trying to install Mouse Cam but it happens alot when I try to open email attachments.

 

what, specifically, is the problem you are having?

 

I don't know what program to use in order to open the file and install mouse cam. How do I know what program to use.

 

I've tried to do some research of what Mouse Cam is, but I can't see to find it. What is the extensioin of the file? i.e. exe, doc, zip

 

I beleive, zip

 

If in fact it is a zip file, download/install this and the file will open just by double-clicking it.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/WinZip_d525.html

 

Thanks, I will give it a try.

 

You should note that that will not install your Mouse Cam. It will just give you access to the file that will. When you unzip that .zip file, there will probably be a readme.txt file (or something similar)in the folder that the files are extracted to, and you should make sure to read it before proceding.

 

That's correct, I should have been more clear. Thanks for the follow-up.

 

For future use, If I am asked what program to use to open a file, is there some way of finding out what kind of file it is, i.e. exe, doc, zip. And what program to use to open it. It happens to me quite often trying to open attachments to email.

 

There are a couple of methods you can use. In Windows XP you can use the radio button that says "Search the Internet" - which will sometimes tell you what program you should be using.

There are a couple of websites you can try as well:
http://filext.com/
http://whatis.techtarget.com/fileFormatA/0,289933,sid9,00.html

But bear in mind that some extensions will have multiple programs associated with them. For example, .DAT files are usually internal databases for a program. Depending on the context it could be anything. If someone sent you a .DAT file they would need to tell you what exactly they were sending for you to make use of the file.

In my line of expertise I often use IFF files, but that extension is a generalisation for any image. The contents of the file could be any number of different formats, the extension only tells you that it is an image. If you were sent this you would need to know what format the file was in before you could open it.