Many problems arise especially when we do not know with which file type we are dealing with. The files which come through email attachments, those which have been made through rash download, those which are brought from USB drives. Downloading an unknown file type might be very dangerous and might put computer at a risk. They can be dormant but they can prove to be potentially harmful software. Therefore as a precaution it is always recommended to know the unknown file type before you start downloading it. The broken fil associations can be fixed if you recognize the file type. There are many free tools which help to change or remove the associated file type. Let us see some of the ways which can be used to recognize the unknown file types.
- Begin with the Google search: Google knows everything and sure it does. It can give information of all the file types as it searches its databases of the few sites. Many pages appear to give you complete detailed information of the file type you are searching for. Not only Google, you can go for other search engines as well like the Bing, Ask.com and others. Always put a .{dot} before the three character extension.
- Wolfram Alpha: This can be considered one of the best tools to find unknown file types. The arcane statistics are very well explained. Enter the extension you want to search for in the search box and click on compute. It shows the information like the type of the file and the applications with which it is compatible. But, it was not as efficient as some rare file types could not be explained.
- FILExt: The website has an alphabetical index of about 1526 extensions. It has a huge database of the records. The Google custom search can be used to find out the file type. Different pages explain different file type. They also claim to scan your PC which you should always avoid.
- Filesuffix: It is also one of the online database which helps in searching the file extensions. The users can always contribute to their databases and the website developers always keep the databases updated. There are various categories of the extensions through which the user can navigate to check the details.
- FileInfo.com: There are few tools which help I knowing the type of file extensions. There is the availability of the browser plug-ins for the Chrome and the Firefox. File Extension Lookup Desktop Gadget can be downloaded for Windows and a File Extension Lookup Dashboard for the Mac PCs.
- File-Extensions.org: It works as similar to FileSuffix but is not as extensive as it. The organization is considered better and the file types are shown with their icons. The day to day file operations have been compiled into the articles which give a deep insight into the different file types used every day.
Therefore these are some of the tools which you should always refer to before knowing downloading the file and this would always protect your computer.