This article applies to Windows 9x/ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Applicability to Vista is unknown.
In Windows, files without an extension can be difficult to work with. Unlike other file types, files with no extention don’t give you a convienient right click option to associate “no extention files” with a file type.
But there is a way…
The rest of this article describes how you can create a file type for files with no extension. With a filetype you can double click files with no extension and have them open in your favorite editor by default.
From a technical standpoint, to associate files with no extension, in the registry you need a key under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for .(just a dot, with no other letters after it). Change the default value of this key to “txtfile” if you wish to associate it the exact same as other text files, or give it a new name and make up a new key for “noext”.
the following is a regedit script I made to save some of the effort of entering this information into your registry.
Notes on the following Reg file: You can change shell32.dll to an .ico file (but if you do, change the number following to 0 to tell it to use the first icon in the file). You can get an icon from my icons page. If you are working with unix text file I would suggest using wordpad or a freeware program like Metapad rather than notepad. Keep in mind if you are editing .reg files, \ is escaped by using a \\
noext.reg
————copy and paste section begins here————-
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.]
@=”noext”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\noext]
@=”No Extension”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\noext\DefaultIcon]
@=”C:\\windows\\system\\shell32.dll,-152″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\noext\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\noext\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\noext\shell\open\command]
@=”\”C:\\windows\\notepad.exe\” %1″
——— copy and paste section ends here ————–
So how’d I figure all this out? Windows broke. One day my unix files decided to associate themselves with winamp, and changed their icons to winamp icons and would open with winamp when you double clicked them.