Computer hiccup? MS Wordpad starts up with a big file already in the edit window.

I didn't open any files. I merely started Wordpad, and the interesting thing is that I accessed it from a shortcut, so I would expect the program to have been available only for execution, and not for display of the file that is the program.

Most of it is encoded so I can't read it. It shows a lot of special symbols, presumably because the codes corresponding to a given chunk of the file usually don't happen to have values that display within the narrow range of codes of ordinary text. However, some looks like source code. For example:



Since I didn't actually reverse-engineer anything, but simply saved a file that was provided to me, am I allowed to try to decipher the file, or could that spell trouble from big bad computer company wolf?

Just a thought, but maybe some malware got onto your PC and changed the shortcut in hopes to execute some malicious code when you launched Wordpad. Anyway, I used to look at files all the time using a hex editor, it never got me into trouble, that I know of anyway.

Right click on the short cut, then click Properties in order to see what file the shortcut points to. It sounds to me like it may not be a Wordpad file and someone created the shortcut pointing to the wrong file.

I would delete the shortcut and then go to: c:\program files\Windows NT\Accessories|Wordpad.exe, right click on the wordpad.exe file and then "send to" and choose "Desktop" (create shortcut).