Dat file not played in VISTA

hdsk.23 · 27-05-2007, 01:22 PM

hello friends
i have occurred with a new problem in vista that i am not able to play .dat files in vista, i have also tried the vlc player but still having problem, also tried vista codec pack also!!!!!!!

gxsaurav · 27-05-2007, 01:53 PM

If it is a dat file copied from a VCD then change teh extension to mpg & it will play.

Go to tools->Folder option->View -> Show extension for known file types.

Then rename the dat file to filename.mpg from filename.dat

aryayush · 27-05-2007, 03:00 PM

Why? AFAIK, XP played DAT files fine enough.

gxsaurav · 27-05-2007, 03:09 PM

Windows never "plays" dat files. They are sytem files, which VCDs use.

In case of Windows XP, what was needed was to execute a dat file & select "Open With....<some media player>. This opened dat in that media player, but used to change the "Open With..." type for all .dat files.

The correct way on Windows is to rename the file.dat to file.mpg. VCD DAT files are nothing but mpg, renamed as .dat.

aryayush · 27-05-2007, 03:22 PM

Ah well, all I need to do is double-click a DAT file and it plays.

And so it did in Windows XP once you associated it with WMP.

Doesn't that happen in Vista any longer?

iMav · 27-05-2007, 03:34 PM

^^ it does ...

aryayush · 27-05-2007, 03:52 PM

Then why is this hdsk.23 guy having issues?

iMav · 27-05-2007, 04:07 PM

if he is having problems doesnt mean that vista cant do it ... why he is having problems is hard to tell if says u know what this is not working ... without telling us an error or something ...

hdsk.23 · 27-05-2007, 08:15 PM

when i run .dat or .avi files it looks like this......see

please anybody help me........
is anyone is able to see clearly movies in vista?????

aryayush · 27-05-2007, 10:31 PM

Did you try gx_saurav's first suggestion?

ashfame · 27-05-2007, 10:35 PM

i would recommend converting them *.dat files to *.mpg files using VCDgear because as you might have noticed that the size of dat files are larger than mpg files because they contain some extra information. I dont know if just renaming them would have any issues or not but my recommendation would be converting them.