BleepingComputer.com: How to show File Extensions in Windows

A new tutorial titled How to show File Extensions in Windows was added by Lawrence Abams. Please use this topic to discuss any aspect of this tutorial.

A brief excerpt of the tutorial can be found here:

The default setting for Windows is to not display a file's extension. Therefore, when viewing files in Windows you would only see the portion of the filename that precedes the last period in it. To show what this means, if you have a file called test.doc.txt, Windows will only display test.doc. From this filename, you would then assume this is a Word document, but when you double-click on it, it would instead open in Notepad as it is actually a text file becaues its true extension is .txt. Even more serious is the fact that many malware creators create their infection files so that they exploit this default setting in order to hide the fact that it is actually an executable file.

We hope you find this tutorial helpful.

The Bleeping Computer Staff

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The default setting for Windows is to not display a file's extension.

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I wish I knew what is MS reasoning for making this a default setting.
The only thing it does is to create a confusion.