That Little Open With Box

hello all,
This is my second day viewing and posting at MG. I got some replies and links yesterday about partitioning my HDD. Well it took approx 5hrs to download this program that I cannot open. This all leads up to the question, how does one know what program, ex: notepad, acrobat, or any of the other 35 or so different titles in that little open with box. I do not know all file extensions or what to open them with. Where can I find this out? I mean is there a list as to open what with what. I have been perplexed for quite some time and I am sure I have deleted necessary files from being frustrated. Can someone help me with this.

 

Hi, blue, and welcome to MajorGeeks!

What's the program?

Here's a partial answer to a difficult question: if the file is a text file, it will Open With Windows Notepad. If it's not a text file, trying to Open With Notepad will get you nothing in the Notepad window.

If it's an htm or html file, it should Open With your browser (almost certainly Internet Explorer).

If it's a graphics file (.jpg, .gif, .tif) it should Open With your Windows Picture Viewer.

If it's an .exe or .dll, you don't want to Open With.

We need to know what the extension is on the file you downloaded, and then we can tell you which of the programs you have you can Open (it) With.

It wouldn't have a .zip extension on the filename, would it?

Oh, check your Windows Explorer settings to make sure that you see Details of files, not just silly icons, and choose Folder Options under Tools in an Explorer window and set the View tab of the panels you'll see to show everything, not hide anything.

Then tell us what the file extension is.

 

thanks Wisewiz, I tried to access an ISO file ext. using FAX, of course I didn't know I was trying to open the file with a fax opening program but now the file is stuck in the FAX opening program. ex: when I click the icon another box appears and tells me that this fax program doesn't recognize the file extension. I am running 98 and I don't know how to get the file back to its original icon. What a learning experience. That is the only reason I know it's an ISO file. The file is part of Ultimate Boot Disk, this is the download that took approx 5-6 hrs. (dial-up). Which also brings up the point, when I click on the Ultimate Boot Disk icon it just extracts C:, what does this mean? I can not do anything with this UBD and the name of the file that is the ISO is ubcd 32 basic which accompanied the UBD download. I don't know how else to explain it. We will figure it out, of that i have no dought.
thanks for all the help.
Blue

 

OK. First, we have no idea what you have there, but a boot disk can't be more than 1.44 MB, and that can't take 5 hours to download even at slooow dial-up speeds, SO ... First, since you've had no successes with this thing, DUMP IT. Just select that file and hit delete.

Now, go to http://bootdisk.com and click on the line near the top that says
DOS/Windows9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent Bootdisks
and then on the page that opens, go down to the line that says
Windows 98 OEM | Alt1 | Alt2
and click the words Windows 98, and tell it where to put the file you're going to Save to Disk.

That file will be an executable file. You don't open it; you RUN it. The way to use it is to insert a clean 3.5" floppy into your floppy drive and then navigate in Explorer to the place where you saved the bootdisk file and double-click the name of that file. It will copy its contents to the floppy disk in a few seconds, and when it's done, the disk is a complete bootdisk for W98, and you can now delete the file you downloaded from the bootdisk.com site and just keep the floppy for use when you need it.

Free, fast, and complete.

Oh, if you boot with the bootdisk and type FDISK when you see the A> prompt blinking, you'll get into FDISK. BUT BEWARE! If you use FDISK on a hard drive you have in your machine, you will lose ALL of the data and operating system on that drive, and have to reinstall everything and start over. But that's probably what you want to do anyway. With FDISK, you can partition the drive as you wish.

There are good instructions in the archives here at MG for partitioning with FDISK, and a Google search will bring up a ton of pages of instructions for partioning a hard drive with FDISK. It's easy once you've seen the guidelines.

Good luck.

 

@Wisewiz

I think the Ultimate Boot Disk bluesteinm is referring to is the Ultimate Boot CD [UBCD], which does come in an ISO format. It's loaded with a large list of tools, including images of boot floppies that you can run from the CD. I've used it once or twice, but lucky haven't really had to use it for anything other than playing around with it (Knock on wood!). Bootdisk.com works fine in this case, just thought I'd let ya know that the UBCD is an option as well.

Carry on!

@bluesteinm

An ISO image is either used by a CD burning program that can turn the ISO into a CD filled with files or you can use a program like ISObuster to turn the ISO into the files, then burn them however you wish.

 

yes noahawk, that is the download, and to me it is useless. This may sound funny to you Geeks but I have never burnt a CD. Thanks for the info, I am getting closer to my goal of running two OS. 98, and XP. This is some pretty neat stuff making these machines do what you want. I am getting Geekier all the time. Once I get this HDD partitioned I will attempt this dual OS. Question?? Does having two OS mean that it will be a dual boot PC?
Thanks for all the help.

 

hello wisewiz, fellow Geek noahawk pinned the file that I downloaded and it is useless to me, so delete I will. What I am trying to accomplish is to run two OS, 98 first because it is the oldest and then XP, I have a CD with XP from school, I was taking a few classes in computers, but had to Drop Out. I have books on hardware and software but I only have so much ROM in my head. I am getting Geekier though and really enjoy computers and love this forum. You Geeks are great! Question?? when I access my BIOS the screen states that I have 15368MB on the primary master HDD. When I run the Belarc Advisor it states that I have 15.35GB usable HD capacity and 13.59GB of HD free space. This is confusing to me. Are they the same size? Now this is in LBA format and in CHS format I have 8455MB. I'll research this, but what is the difference? Thanks for the links. Blue
PS Do I just leave these messages and replies posted?

 

noahawk: Thanks for the reminder. I once remembered what the UBS was, but my meory isn't what it used to be. In any case, the simplest thing for Blue to do is dump that and move on to simpler things.

Blue, the 15368MB and the 15.35GB are the same count, done different ways. The fact that you have 13.59GB of free space left means that a chunk of that drive is storing files. If you have, say, a DELL, that would be the size of the rescue partition put on the drive and hidden by DELL. In any case, free space is what you can use.

However, if you use a boot disk to format the entire hard drive and repartition it, you will wipe out the rescue partition (if that's what it is) completely, and then you'll have 15+GB of free space.

 

I agree to just using the boot floppy. Everyone needs a reminder sometime...