Hi Thessler, welcome to the Seven Forums.
That .exe is so called file extension. Windows inherited the extension system from its predessor MS-DOS, where a filename had a maximum 8 character long name and a three character extension, separated with a dot from the name. Although Windows can use filenames and extensions up to 255 characters long, the lenght of the extensions normally used is still that 3 characters from DOS era.
File extension tells Windows what kind of file it is. For instance, if the file extension is
.txt, Windows knows it's a text file and opens it (by default) with Notepad, and when Windows sees a file has an
.xls extension, it knows it is a spreadsheet which normally opens with Excel (or similar) spreadsheet program.
Extension
.exe means it is a program that can be run as it is, without need to use another program to open it. If you have chosen to hide extensions of known filetypes (default setting in Windows), Windows shows only the filenames, not the extensions. If you have got instructions to download a program from our forums and then right click the
.exe, it's safe to assume the file itself is an
.exe (executable). Right click it and see what happens.
If you are interested to see the extensions, not only the file names, you can change the default setting from
Control Panel > Folder Options. Click the
View tab, and uncheck
Hide extensions for known file types:
Attachment 121144
Kari