I’m going through some very old computer files (ca. 1989) and I’ve come across a file that I saved called MOUSELES.CHK.
I cannot find any useful references to this file on the web, or even searching back issues of PC Magazine, etc. through Google Books, thinking maybe it was some DIY solution to a problem I’ve forgotten about.
The file is 48 bytes long, so it’s clearly not much in the way of data. I’ve opened it with a hex editor and found no useful clues (my experience has been that sometimes files like this would give the name of the program they were associated with somewhere in them).
Now, I can deduce from the file name that it’s purpose is to check to see whether or not a mouse was connected. Being from 1989, it’s from a time when I was using computers in my college computer lab, and I know from memory that those computers were DOS-based with some sort of menuing system that let the user choose an application.
I’m hoping someone has clearer memories of those days and might recall specifically what system used this file. My experience with PCs was very young at that time, and all I would have been using would have been Word, R:Base, Paintbrush, and possibly Lotus 1-2-3, which I remember opening once and having to reboot the damn computer to get out of because I didn’t know about the / menus.
The .CHK file type suggests it was an output from CHKDSK, or a partial, orphaned file or fragment. CHKDSK tries to recover areas on a disk that are marked as in use, but aren’t properly linked. The program doesn’t know what the original file name was, since the data is no longer there, but it does know it once belonged to something else. The MOUS… part may have been added by the user.
The idea was for the user to delete the CHK file, putting the space back in the available list, once he determined it wasn’t worth saving, or concatenating it with something else if it was.
I agree that it’s almost certainly a recovered fragment of a fragged file, although CHKDSK names those like FILE0001.CHK, FILE0002.CHK, etc. If you looked at it in a hex editor and can’t figure out what it is, then it’s useless.
Instead of a hexeditor, you might try typing the file (“type [pathname]”). DOS will spit out the contents of the file, regardless of what they are. Maybe you’ll find some plaintext in there. I recall files from back then being much easier to read. Think back to the days of messing with .ini files instead of taking your chances with the registry.
Also, if it helps, I recall the system on one of my first computers being called “Headstart Environment” but I’m having a really hard time finding anything about it so it’s possible I’m a bit off on the name. Even looking at wiki’s page on early GUI’s the closest (looking) thing I could find was early versions of Norton Utilities.
If you think it is truly machine code, then a disassembler like IDA or Ollydbg will translate it into a more readable format. With only 48 bytes, you don’t have to be a super expert to figure out what it does. Though you might have trouble identifying a system call that is not standard MS-DOS.
Not a bad idea, but if it is truly a file fragment, you have no guarantee that the first byte in the file is also the first byte of a sequential multi-byte instruction, or a single byte instruction by itself. This will throw off the disassembler for a few bytes, and you don’t have much left out of 48.
Because I really don’t remember, did they even have chkdsk in the late 80’s? I can’t remember if that was one of the things we’d run when we had trouble. Even so, limiting file names to 8 characters didn’t end all that long ago (or at least it doesn’t feel like it did) and using the extension to get a few more spaces wasn’t all that uncommon. I think that’s what the OP was getting at, it’s “mouseless check” as in “check to see if there’s a mouse”. Probably called up from a GUI program as it was loading.
That seems really doubtful Joey_P: The .CHK files were originally checkdisk rescue files. They wouldn’t make a new file type, that used an ancient extension. That would just be a recipe for confusion.
Oh, sure, I named my important plaintext files COMMAND.EXE. But I know about it, and I was just being silly.
Back in the days when documents, created in an editor like PC-Write, were simply text files with a few control characters added, then CHKDSK had a possible use. But even DOS outgrew CHKDSK fragments before Microsoft abandoned it.
The problem with the extension being part of the name is that it might not work properly with the wrong extension. If, for instance, this is machine code, then it’s not going to execute with a .chk extension: You’d have to rename it to .exe or .com every time you used it.
Good point, and something I hadn’t considered (and I’m not sure that’s true). But seeing as the CHKDSK source (if that’s what it is) has been filename-altered already, all bets are off. If someone wanted to disguise a file for any reason, they could name it anything they wanted, make it any length and insert any content. Or the disk could have become corrupted and 48 bytes is erroneous.
This is kind of what I’m wondering, especially since this is a disk from the college computer lab, as I understand it. Is it possible this was some resource used in another homebrew program or script and whoever made it, wanting to be more descriptive and get around the 8.3 file naming conventions, just bled the filename over to the file extension side of the name, not aware that .CHK is conventionally a check disk file extension? I’d be guessing somewhere along those lines.
A .CHK file isn’t necessarily from CHKDSK. A quick Google tells me that
[ul]
[li]Database file that contains virus definitions for Sophos Anti-Virus; updated with InterCheck, a service that checks a central virus reporting system; can be modified by changing the InterCheck reporting level and syslog configuration settings.[/li]
[li]Uncompressed Starcraft map included with the Blizzard installer CD; similar to a .MPQ formatted file, such as a .SCM or .SCX scenario file, but is not compressed into an archive format.[/li]
[li]File used by Netgear routers when updating the firmware; stores low-level system data that runs the router; can be used for applying router updates using the Netgear Web browser interface, which is often accessed at the local 192.168.1.1 local network address.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Interface Data for 3D Movie Maker. The identifying characters used for this association are - Hex: 43 48 4E 32 20 43 4F 53 , [/li]
[li]File extension CHK is basically a binary image for the ProxySG appliances by Blue Coat.[/li]
[li]EpiData is a computer program for simple or programmed data entry and for data documentation. The .CHK file contains rules for data entry/checking.[/li]
[li]Distribution format containing multiple streams (typ. languages) of subtitle text, timing and presentation style data for video.[/li]
[li]WordPerfect (Temporary File)[/li][/ul]
Interesting. The Word Perfect one sounds like it could be promising. Nothing else there seems like it would fit into 48 bytes. (Assuming it’s a complete file, of course, which is not necessarily an assumption we could make.) I like that idea. I wonder if there would be any header information in that, though, that we should see in a hex dump, but if it’s just a temporary file format used by the program, perhaps not. Of course, at 48 bytes it’s also a pretty skinny file for a word processing document, but who knows? Plus I would expect to see some sort of text, but maybe it’s not encoded the way I’d expect.
Notwithstanding the interesting but esoteric topic of the provenance of this file, IME if you found a file that is old enough to drink, it’s only 48 bytes, and looking at it in a hex editor doesn’t bear fruit, you have already spent more time on this than it’s worth.
The WordPerfect temp file is the most promising idea yet, but for the fact that all of my word processing documents from that era are Word for DOS, so I’m 99% certain that WordPerfect was not a available to me.
Big-picture-wise, I have pretty much come to the same conclusion as CookingWithGas and written this off as a 48-byte mystery for the ages.
I still welcome any and all thoughts and suggestions from the Teeming Millions, as this has already proven to be the biggest thread I have started since 24 went off the air the first time.
Ignoring the extension for a minute: the first name looks like it’s short for “mouseless.” Is it possible that it’s a config file or driver for some program that had a mouseless mode? Maybe a set of keyboard shortcuts?
Out of curiosity, I did a search on my PC for .chk files and came up with quite a few.
There are several copies of edb.chk which is apparently part of an Active Directory thing and is also used my Mozilla (Firefox) which also uses some other files ending in .chk. (These file names date back to Netscape! I recently installed the last Netscape just for fun and some of these same files are found there.)
There are also 3 files under Cygwin with names similar to the Mozilla ones presumably with the same purpose.
Under Windows there’s some more in subdirs indicating, again, a possible connection to Active Directory.
Concerning sizes, it’s interesting. Of the 22 files found only 4 different files sizes appear: 476, 899, 8KB, 9.28MB. Much bigger than the OP’s file.
I don’t think there’s anything on a “modern” PC* that relates to the OP’s mystery file.
BTW: I used the free program UltraSearch to do this. It’s a good program.
This PC has been continually upgraded since MS-DOS 3.3 and there’s a lot of old stuff lying around, including WP. Something that’s going to change with my new computer I’m setting up that’s starting off with a fresh install of Win10 Pro.
