Hi all. I made a silly mistake that I am rather embarased about and hope that someone will be able to help me out with please. I down loaded a couple of .gif files but could not open then for some reason after they appeared on my desktop in a generic form. When I clicked on it, it up came with the "open with" window. Not knowing any different I pathed it to open with 'paint', but ommited to remove the 'tick' from the 'always open with' option. Now I cannot get rid of my mistake. Could someone please tell me how/what I must use to open .gif files, and to reverse my boo boo? And just as a side bar, can .gif files be converted to .ico files, if so, how? Regards Thinking hurts my head

Use IrfanView for graphics (and conversion) and use its built-in association manager Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid. -John Wayne

Easy to fix... hold down Shift and right click a .gif file. This will give you the "open with" option again. Selet the program you want to open it with again.

Hi Jboy. Thanks for that, but I am afraid I will have to wait 2 weeks before I can do this download. I have the usual problem of running out of bandwidth 2 weeks ahead of time. Bummer! Do you know, is there anything in Windows that I can do to change an .gif file into an .ico (icon)to use as required? Regards Thinking hurts my head

You can reassociate as described in message #2 - in the absence of a real imageviewer, I believe the default program is Internet Explorer. Conversion of filetypes is a different matter though. Seem to recall that you can rename a BMP to ICO and that will work - although not quite the same thing Irfanview is pretty tiny - the basic program (without plugins) is under a Mb and fits on a floppy (since you seem to have 'net access at the moment) One of the better(best?) freeware apps around, imo Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid. -John Wayne

Hi Janset, To convert a .gif to an .ico one may first convert to .bmp using something like Paint(or prefer PSP) then convert from .bmp to .ico using IconPro: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwui/html/msdn_icons.asp?frame=true Or a more easy way, find an icon program that has a capture feature. A really easy one is Clik: www.blaiz.net (free), and there are more free icon programs around. Best

Hi guys. Thanks for all the input. I used a bit of everyone suggestions and got a result. This is how. I opened the .gif file with Internet Explorer. I then used a program that I already had, "Snagit" and set it up so the finished 'snag' would turn out as a BMP. (there is no .ico in my program) I then saved the captured .BMP image to file on the desktop. Once there, I changed the .BMP file extension to .Ico, and Bob's your uncle, one useful ico to do my bidding. Thanks again guys. Regards Thinking hurts my head