Hello S Malik,
I must admit ignorance of .dat file associations, until now. I have PhotoDirector installed on a number of PCs & checked the file associations on each one. On 3 out of 4, as you suggested, .dat file types were defaulted to
PhotoDirector 8. On one of the PCs, it was associated (by default, not through my action) with a media centre/home theatre app called
Kodi, which I'd only installed for testing a video issue.
Once I uninstalled Kodi, that PC defaulted to PhotoDirector 10 for .dat files.
As others have suggested, it can be annoying when software, or Windows itself, alters file associations on installation or update without the option for user intervention.
In my Default Apps settings, under .dat, there are no other options than PhD, as there are for many other file types. That suggests to me that PhD is the only software installed that makes use of it. Perhaps
optodata or
tomasc might be able to shed some light on this?
From the limited reading I've done, it seems that .dat files are generic data files created & used by an application. e.g. on this PC .dat files are generated by many installed applications... ZonerPhoto Studio, ProDAD Adorage & Microsoft Edge. Oddly, not a single .dat file I checked can be accessed by PhD!
PIX
PIX YouTube channel