To remove a virus, I had to download a file and rename both the filename and the file extension. Windows 7 won’t let me change the extension. How can I do that?

There are a couple of ways to do this, so I’ll show you the easier Windows-based way of turning on file extension editing. I highly recommend once you’ve edited the file extensions to turn this feature back off, as turning “mydocument.doc” into just “mydocument” can have some bad results – such as the file not being able to be opened by regular double-clicking.

So, open My Computer or Computer by clicking Start then Computer. Now hold down the Alt key on the keyboard and press the T key. This should bring up the tools menu. Click on Folder options.

Click on the View tab, then scroll down to “Hide extensions for known file types” and uncheck the box. Click Applythen OK.

Now you can navigate to the file you need to change and you will see both the file name and the extension. You can right click on a file and left click Rename to change the name and extension.

Once again, when you’ve completed the changes I highly recommend going back into folder options and rechecking the “Hide extensions for known file types.”

-- Nishad S S