Its not that it had been renamed... it still has the .bak extension. The problem is when u go and right click on the file and say open with... it opens now with sql server express (cause I thought I knew what I was done... "thought")... so its become the default program to open .bak files. I can switch it to any other program as its default when i go into open with and then select another program in the list but the program command shell is not visible. Let me know if that makes completely no sense at all... its been a long day.