With so many different types of file around these days, it’s important that every file you try to open or execute is correctly identified by Windows. This is obviously achieved by looking at the file extension of .exe or .jpg for example, and when you double click on one of those files, the system knows what it is and what to do with it.
It’s probably happened to you before that you download or receive a file and it has no extension at all or something rather obscure which can’t be correct. In that case, how do you know what the file actually is, could it be a text file, or an MP3, or a zip file? The possibilities are almost endless as to the extension you could give it, and in some cases if you have an idea of what the file is, could get close enough to be able to open the file.
In actual fact, Windows even does this when running a CheckDisk because any corrupted files it recovers are simply named File****.CHK and you have to find the extension yourself to rename it back. Thankfully, we’ve previously covered this topic and you can read more about it in the 7 Ways To Recover CHK Files Created by CHKDSK and SCANDISK article.
We've recently introduced the Eclipse Installer, a new and more efficient way to install Eclipse. It is a proper installer (no zip files), with a self-extracting download that leads you through the installation process. For those who prefer not to use the Installer, the packages and zip files are still available on our package download page. TrID-Net is a free tool - a GUI for TrID - which can identify more than 7,000 file formats from their contents alone. The program could be handy if you've found a file that's lost its original extension, or maybe it has an extension you don't recognise and you'd like to know what it is, or where it's come from.
If you’re looking for a more generic solution to identifying unrecognized file types, here are 5 tools to help you find them or files which have been given the wrong extension. All programs were tested on Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit.
1. Locate Opener
Locate Opener installs itself into your right click context menu, and when you run the program executable it simply has an install or remove button to add it into the menu. From there, you right click on an unrecognized or incorrectly labelled file and select LocateOpener from your context menu. Depending on whether the file has no extension at all or one it cannot identify, you will either be asked to look for the extension online at file-extension.net or to scan the file with TrID.
To get the latest file definitions, just download and extract the TrIDDefs.TRD package to Locate Opener’s TrID folder. If the program has found any matches through TrID it will pop up a box with the most likely in terms of percentages, and offer to give the file an extension that best fits. The program also has a command line and several advanced options can be configured through the ini file.
Download Locate Opener
2. Smart File Advisor
This is another program that places itself into your right click context menu, although it does use a more traditional installer unlike Locate Opener’s semi portable tool. Simply right click on the file and select Smart File Advisor from the menu. A box will appear which asks what you want to do next; search its parent website Filefacts.net for the appropriate program or let Windows manage the file by selecting a program via Open with.
The search Filefacts option on its own is not that helpful unless you’re looking for an unknown extension. The most useful function is the tick box in the window that says “send first 20 bytes of the file to help detect file type”. Just about all files can be identified by analyzing the first few bytes of their content so sending these 20 bytes should identify a file with no extension. If you click the link it will show the 20 bytes to be sent in ASCII and HEX format. Click OK to send and a webpage from Filefacts will open to tell you what a missing extension should be or what a wrong extension should be renamed to.
Download Smart File Advisor
3. Identify!
Identify! is a very old utility that dates back to 1999, but still actually works fine, even on Windows 7 x64, and it’s also only a tiny 200K portable executable. There may be newer file formats around since then but the way they’re identified is still exactly the same. The list of around 150 supported types is rather small compared to the 5,000+ in the TrID database, but it covers the most common types. Also Identify! has an added feature built in which is you can easily add your own file formats to its current list or edit what’s already there. Go to Edit -> Library to access the editor.
Run the program to open the window and select File -> “Open and Identify” to locate the file you want to check on. What it’s been identified as will show in the window along with the suggested file extension in brackets. The only thing that doesn’t seem to work in the program is the shell extension option to put an entry in the context menu, but it handles the identification of unknown files without issue. Being small and portable makes it useful for a USB toolkit.
Download Identify!
4. ExifTool
The ExifTool program works in a slightly different way to the other programs here because it’s a command line tool that you can also use from the desktop. Simply extract the executable from the zip file and to identify a file, drag and drop it onto the ExifTool icon. Any extensions the file has will be ignored and its content will be scanned so it doesn’t matter if the file has no extension or simply a wrong extension.
As more knowledgeable users might recognize from its name, Exiftool is designed primarily for viewing and editing the meta information held in most digital images, especially cameras. But it is also capable of recognizing hundreds of different file types from their content. After dropping a file onto the icon a DOS window will open with information about the file and could also include extra information such as image tag details, archive information or executable file descriptions etc. Double click on ExifTool for help, supported types and extra commands that can be used.
Download ExifTool
5. Analyze It!
Apart from the ability to determine a file type from its content, AnalyzeIt! also has a couple of other functions which could be useful to some. One is getting detailed information about a file extension such as Mime type and classification, the company that created it, its ID and also the characters in Hex and ASCII that identifies it. There’s an even more advanced window of detail in the PE Info tab which can give raw information about executable files. The Content Into tab is the most useful one for identifying unknown files.
The program needs installing and can also place an Analyze It! entry in your right click context menu. The Content info tab displays the file’s attributes, whether it’s a binary or text file, and also the first 16 bytes of its content in Hex and ASCII formats. Experienced users might be able to tell what the file is just from that information alone. Click on the “Analyze file header and content button” and the program will identify the most probable type of file, it will then offer to rename it to the correct extension for you.
Download Analyze It!
Editor’s Note: One of the most popular tools to help identify unknown files is the TrID utility itself. Several tools use the TrID definitions files and library but there is also an old GUI utility if you want to use it. This tool and another which uses the defs file is FiletypeID, both of which have been previously written about in the Recover CHK Files Created by CHKDSK and SCANDISK article. There is also a guide there on how to manually identify unknown files without needing software to do it for you.
You might also like:
Universal Extractor – A Tool That Supports Extracting All Types of Archive Files7 Ways To to Remove a File Extension Association in Windows3 Programs to View Almost Any Types of Files10 Free Tools To Save or Print a List of File and Folder Contents10 Tools to Verify File Integrity Using MD5 and SHA1 Hashes
18 Comments - Write a Comment
You can easily check the file type online at checkfiletype.com
No downloads…also gives mime type and file extension too.
Reply
Don3 months ago
Works great, thank you, and no downloads!
Reply
Very useful article > Thank you very much>
Reply
File 4 Windows5 months ago
Nice articles. Thanks for sharing Admin.
Reply
You can detect binary files via Exeinfo Pe detector !!!!
exeinfo.xn.pl
Reply
John Williams2 years ago
You can check the file type from any browser
checkfiletype.com
John
Reply
Nowadays you can detect file types via the browser. No need to install applications. I wrote a tool that leverages libmagic running with Webassembly. It does not require uploading the files to a server. It runs locally on the browser.
Thanks for this article! Locate Opener work great for me! Love the command-line function!
Reply
As usual you do miracles in finding the right tools at the right time… I used a auto renamer and messed up a folder of mixed goodies theses tools will help me clean the mess up.
Thanks for the research saved me a days work I’m sure of it.
Reply
AMIRZ12 years ago
You’re the best!!!!!Thanks!!!!!!!
Reply
Hi! Just seen on TrID’s website logs visitors coming from here! :) Nice to hear that it’s useful.
Thanks, Bye!
Reply
Terence Hill12 years ago
What honor to be mentioned in the article! :)
At the next time Raymond ;)
Reply
Thanks Good post !
Reply
Mahmoud Mustafa12 years ago
Thanks Raymond
Reply
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Applies to: Configuration Manager (current branch)
There are several methods available to you for downloading software updates in Configuration Manager. When you create an automatic deployment rule (ADR) or manually deploy software updates, the software updates are downloaded to the content library on the site server. Then, the software updates are copied to the content library on the distribution points that are associated with the configured deployment package. If you want to download the software updates before you deploy them, you can use the Download Updates Wizard. Doing this will enable you to verify that the software updates are available on distribution points before you deploy the software updates to client computers.
Note
For information about monitoring content status, see the Content status monitoring.
Use the following procedure to download software updates by using the Download Software Updates Wizard.
To download software updates
In the Configuration Manager console, go to the Software Library workspace, and select the Software Updates node.
Choose the software update to download by using one of the following methods:
Select one or more software update groups from the Software Update Groups node. Then click Download in the ribbon.
Select one or more software updates from All Software Updates node. Then click Download in the ribbon.
Note
In the All Software Updates node, Configuration Manager displays only software updates with a Critical and Security classification that have been released in the last 30 days.
Tip
Click Add Criteria to filter the software updates that are displayed in the All Software Updates node. Save search criteria that you often use, and then manage saved searches on the Search tab.
On the Deployment Package page of the Download Software Updates Wizard, configure the following settings:
Select deployment package: Choose this setting to select an existing deployment package for the software updates that are in the deployment.
Note
Software updates that the site has already downloaded to the selected deployment package won't be downloaded again.
Create a new deployment package: Select this setting to create a new deployment package for the software updates in the deployment. Configure the following settings:
Name: Specifies the name of the deployment package. The package must have a unique name that briefly describes the package content. It's limited to 50 characters.
Description: Specify a description that provides information about the deployment package. The optional description is limited to 127 characters.
Package source: Specifies the location of the software update source files. Type a network path for the source location, for example, serversharenamepath, or click Browse to find the network location. Create the shared folder for the deployment package source files before you proceed to the next page.
You can't use the specified location as the source of another software deployment package.
You can change the package source location in the deployment package properties after Configuration Manager creates the deployment package. If you do, first copy the content from the original package source to the new package source location.
The computer account of the SMS Provider and the user that's running the wizard to download the software updates must both have Write permissions to the download location. Restrict access to the download location. This restriction reduces the risk of attackers tampering with the software update source files.
Enable binary differential replication: Enable this setting to minimize network traffic between sites. Binary differential replication (BDR) only updates the content that has changed in the package, instead of updating the entire package contents. For more information, see Binary differential replication.
On the Distribution Points page, specify the distribution points or distribution point groups to host the software update files. For more information about distribution points, see Distribution point configurations. This page is available only when you create a new software update deployment package.
The Distribution Settings page is available only when you create a new software update deployment package. Specify the following settings:
Distribution priority: Use this setting to specify the distribution priority for the deployment package. The distribution priority applies when the deployment package is sent to distribution points at child sites. Deployment packages are sent in priority order: high, medium, or low. Packages with identical priorities are sent in the order in which they were created. If there's no backlog, the package processes immediately regardless of its priority. By default, the site sends packages with Medium priority.
Enable for on-demand distribution: Use this setting to enable on-demand content distribution to distribution points configured for this feature and in the client's current boundary group. When you enable this setting, the management point creates a trigger for the distribution manager to distribute the content to all such distribution points when a client requests the content for the package and the content isn't available. For more information, see On-demand content distribution.
Prestaged distribution point settings: Use this setting to specify how you want to distribute content to prestaged distribution points. Choose one of the following options:
Automatically download content when packages are assigned to distribution points: Use this setting to ignore the prestage settings and distribute content to the distribution point.
Download only content changes to the distribution point: Use this setting to prestage the initial content to the distribution point, and then distribute content changes to the distribution point.
Manually copy the content in this package to the distribution point: Use this setting to always prestage content on the distribution point. This option is the default.
For more information about prestaging content to distribution points, see Use Prestaged content.
On the Download Location page, specify the location that Configuration Manager uses to download the software update source files. Use one of the following options:
Download software updates from the Internet: Select this setting to download the software updates from the location on the internet. This option is the default.
Download software updates from a location on my network: Select this setting to download the software updates from a local directory or shared folder. This setting is useful when the computer that runs the wizard doesn't have internet access. Any computer with internet access can preliminarily download the software updates. Then store them in a location on the local network that's accessible from the computer that runs the wizard.
On the Language Selection page, select the languages for which the site downloads the selected software updates. The site only downloads these updates if they're available in the selected languages. Software updates that aren't language-specific are always downloaded. By default, the wizard selects the languages that you've configured in the software update point properties. At least one language must be selected before proceeding to the next page. When you select only languages that a software update doesn't support, the download fails for the update.
On the Summary page, verify the settings that you selected in the wizard, and then click Next to download the software updates.
On the Completion page, verify that the software updates were successfully downloaded, and then click Close.