should a dbx file become a notepad or wordpad file? 1

[pawz]

hello all

Am busy de-infesting a computer ( not this one - relax) from two Netsky variants, couple of Trojans, spyware etc, and am satisified that the nasties have gone and that the system is intact, but one thing bothers me.

The owner of this machine has about 44Mb of e-mails in Outlook Express, and it was his particular concern that he didn't know how to back these up, as there is a lot of vital info in there that he doesn't want to lose, and needs to access on a regular basis.

The best advice I could offer him for a quick way of handling so many e-mails was to copy the dbx file(s) to a safe place ( he has a zip drive).
I didn't see this as the ideal solution but couldn't think of a better one.
Well, I went to Identities, where the OE dbx files are stored, and I was suprised to find that the individual 'boxes'including his own, were each separately presented under their own headings and in notepad or wordpad format.

That doesn't seem right to me - Inbox should be a single discrete file, as should Outbox and all the others, and have a generic windows icon to represent the whole file as a single block of data - isn't that right?

Thing is, if his files are being wrongly presented, can I safely rectify them by reassociating them? It would just be awful if I lost all his e-mails. Would it be better and safe to leave them as they are??

 

[smah]

They are probably fine; at some point, someone probably tried to associate those files with notepad or wordpad. If you try to open them that way hopefully you should end up with a bunch of garbage - be sure not to save from Wordpad/notepad. I assume that they still work correctly in OE, hopefully?

You don't need to re-associate them; you need to disassociate them which you can do under the Folder Options of Windows Explorer (exact location varies slightly by OS). I think you need to completely delete the .dbx association. I am currently looking at an XP machine that has no dbx associations listed.

Here's some good backup software that you might want to check out:

http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/index.htm

 

[pawz]

they do work ok in OE and the notepad dbx files in Indentities open as well and you can pick out the text among the squares and gobbledegook.

Should they ever be associatd with anything? I looked in our Win 98 machine and there isn't a DBX association available in file types. DBX files typically show as unassociated 'windows' icon don't they?

Anyway, I shall follow your advice and leave them alone, just in case. The viruses seemed to have done a few odd things - I thought this might be another. The owner wouldn't have knowingly tried to alter what dbx's open with - nor are they accessible to casual tinkering - so I feared the worst - but, as you say, I will leave them alone.

thanks for your help smah.

 

[smah]

You're correct, there should not be any association for dbx files. You should delete the existing association in Windows Explorer.

I suppose this incorrect association could have been caused by a virus, but usually it's a human that forgets to uncheck the 'always open with....' option.

 

[pawz]

done that smah, presents as unassociated now and everything works ok (phew). Interestingly, the application data folder was hidden before, now it isn't. Wonderful! star for smah