J
Jason Taylor
I got stung by a virus the other day because I didn't want to take the
time to open a questionable file with Notepad first and look at it.
Doing a quick skim of a program in ASCII to make sure it appears
somewhat on target to what it is supposed to do is an easy way to
check that it is ok. If you see, e.g., "sendmail" in a program that
is supposed to check your battery energy, you know it is probably
malware. The thing making this difficult is that Microsoft tends to
insulate real internals from users, so there is no option to view
programs in ASCII from Explorer.
The following reg hack fixes this. Cut and paste into file.reg, then
click on it, and you should will be able view executables in Notepad
by simply right clicking on them. Enjoy.
Jason Taylor
--CUT HERE---
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
;Right-Click Start .exe in High Priority Context Item
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell]
@="open"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\jasonsnotepadopener]
@="View in ASCII"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\jasonsnotepadopener\Command]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\NOTEPAD.EXE \"%1\""
--CUT HERE---
time to open a questionable file with Notepad first and look at it.
Doing a quick skim of a program in ASCII to make sure it appears
somewhat on target to what it is supposed to do is an easy way to
check that it is ok. If you see, e.g., "sendmail" in a program that
is supposed to check your battery energy, you know it is probably
malware. The thing making this difficult is that Microsoft tends to
insulate real internals from users, so there is no option to view
programs in ASCII from Explorer.
The following reg hack fixes this. Cut and paste into file.reg, then
click on it, and you should will be able view executables in Notepad
by simply right clicking on them. Enjoy.
Jason Taylor
--CUT HERE---
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
;Right-Click Start .exe in High Priority Context Item
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell]
@="open"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\jasonsnotepadopener]
@="View in ASCII"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\jasonsnotepadopener\Command]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\NOTEPAD.EXE \"%1\""
--CUT HERE---