Is there a .dat editor I can use?

[daljaxon]

Hi, my system crashed recently, Win98 running on a socket 7 motherboard with a P233MMX after I installed AVG Virus protection. It seems to me that it started up at startup at the same time that my Zone alarm firewall did and it corrupted an important file.

Anyway I reinstalled windows and lost my program on typing. Now, I have the old files, but the new reinstallation of the typing program wont recognize the old. I believe that I can edit the old data file and use it with my older files to start from where I left off.

Is there an .dat editor that I can do this with or at least try. If I mess it up, I am not doing any harm to the existing program, but I would like to try at least.

Thanks, ...........daljaxon

[ArcticFox]

Notepad has always worked for me!

[daljaxon]

Thanks for your reply,

I have used notepad and wordpad and am able to read characters. I am not able to copy and paste any though. I was trying to match up old files in the work folder to new files, so that the program would read all the important info as well as the old lessons. This did not work with my limited knowledge. I think that I will study more on this and learn about this area and see if what I want to do is possible.

For example, I have characters with my little amount of text like

*squares
*spaces that are equal to 2 or more space bar spaces that are
read as a single space
*other symbols

None of these were something I was able to copy and paste, nor replicate.

I will research this and see what I can find out, take care....

[ArcticFox]

Sorry, other than basic text editors I don't have an answer.

[Beemer]

The only other option is to re-install over top of the existing program. Sometimes the new version will keep your old settings and created data. ("Sometimes")

EG: Install ICQ over top of an existing install and you get your old list back.

Cheers!

[daljaxon]

Thanks ArticFox and Beemer;

ArticFox.....thanks for your input, any was fine, I appreciate that. I might be flogging a dead horse here, so I'm going to have to learn more about this area. Just needed a little direction. You had realize I need to recheck my notepad and that I can read some of the data, now I need to find out what the rest is and maybe reconfigure it, if possible. Take care.

Beemer.....a little late for that I'm afraid. Had to reinstall my OS and all programs. All I had left was the lesson file that I had on a different drive. Not real important to get this up, but I thought this might be good project to try and learn from. Redoing program user files. Kind of intrigued me, "Can I do this?" kind of thing. Thanks, I'll remember to try your advice if any thing like this happens again, and I am able to reinstal over the existing program.

..........daljaxon