SupportAssist, taken over file associations

One final thing, the £2000 I have managed to scrape together for a new pc that will work with windows 11, cos mine doesn't, will now most definitely NOT get spent on another Dell pc this time!

And I did do a chat with Dell Support about this and asked them to fix it as it was their free Dell SupportAssist app and its icon that had caused the problem in the first place and therefore it should benefit them to a massive degree to correct the problems they themselves are causing to their consumer's computers.

No free help is forthcoming there though as my machine is out of warranty and they invited me to pay a SupportAssist fee of £48 for technical help before they would even consider doing anything about it.

I have recently updated to the latest version of Support Assist.

I noticed a couple of days ago that some programs had the blue Dell Support Assist spanner icon inside their folders.

Looking inside these folders I found that all the .dat files had the Support Assist icon instead of whatever icon they should or maybe should have associated with that file in that program.

Then I noticed that this was happening right across my whole pc, every .dat file had the Dell Support Assist icon displayed everywhere.

.dat files pc wide everywhere all showing Dell Support Assist Icon after Dell SA update

I checked in Default apps under file type associations and there it was the Dell Support Assist icon set as the default app for all .dat files.

I've tried setting the default app to another .dat association like a file viewer but then that file viewer icon just replaces the Dell Support Assist icon computer wide.

I thought to reset the pc to Microsoft recommended defaults to reset the .dat file association in Settings hopefully to The + icon and the words Choose a Default.

I had .dat associated with the file viewer I use and the file viewer icon was displayed, but after resetting all default apps to Microsoft recommended defaults I looked again and found the .dat files Microsoft recommended default must now be the Dell Support Assist icon which was now reset as the .dat file default app association.

If I knew how to clear the .dat file association back to the + icon and the words Choose a Default that would do it for me., of course remembering just hitting the reset button for Microsoft recommended defaults doesn't do anything except put the Dell Support Assist icon back as the default .dat icon.

I'm getting ticked off with seeing that white spanner on a bright blue background everywhere I look on my pc!!!!
Does anyone know how to do that, please?

And I did do a chat with Dell Support about this and asked them to fix it as it was their free Dell SupportAssist app and its icon that had caused the problem in the first place and therefore it should benefit them to a massive degree to correct the problems they themselves are causing to their consumer's computers.

No free help is forthcoming there though as my machine is out of warranty and they invited me to pay a SupportAssist fee of £48 for technical help before they would even consider doing anything about it.

One final thing, the £2000 I have managed to scrape together for a new pc that will work with windows 11, cos mine doesn't, will now most definitely NOT get spent on another Dell pc this time!

Hi LovejoyPeacemaker:

After reading your post I checked and can confirm that all .DAT files on my Inspiron 5584 / Win 10 Pro v22H2 laptop are displaying the SupportAssist icon (blue circle with white wrench) as the default icon. For example, if I search C:\Programs Files for *.dat I see that .DAT files for all my non-Dell software have this icon ...

If I go to Settings | Apps | Default Apps, scroll to the bottom and and click the "Choose Default Apps by File Type" link I can see that all .DAT files have SupportAssist as the default app ...

... and if I go to Setting | Apps | Default Apps, scroll to the bottom and click the "Set Defaults by App" link I can also see that the SupportAssist app is associated with all .DAT files.

I don't know when this started but I should note that this appears to be a problem with the small 4 MB SupportAssist v3.13.7.0 APPx module at Settings | Apps | Apps & Features highlighted in red below, and not the full ~ 295 MB Dell SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 application that is also listed at Control Panel Programs | Programs. I've posted what little I know about this small APPX module in my 22-Feb-2023 post in HeyTony's Brand New XPS17 Issues with Locking Up, Blue Screen and Update of SupportAssist. 

Does anyone know how to fix this, short of uninstalling SupportAssist v3.13.2.14?  I don't want to start playing around with the file associations for all my .DAT files and make things worse than they already are.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2604 * Firefox v111.0.0 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2301.6-1.1.200000.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v 4.5.24.248-1.0.1944 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 * Dell Update for Windows Universal v4.7.1 * Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.5.5.16458 * Fusion Service v2.2.14.0 * Inspiron 5583/5584 BIOS v1.22.1
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

Hi Imacri

Thank you for confirming for me that this "little" problem has NOT been caused by me and that it has something to do with the Dell Support Assist software.

I did a complete uninstall of all Dell Support Assist software on my machine and then as that did nothing to solve the problem I solved the problem with a completely clean wipe of my hard drive and a fully clean reinstall of Windows 10.

Firstly, I haven't got the time to wait for around for someone to come up with an answer and secondly, there's no way that I'm going to shell out £48 of my hard-earned money to pay some tech at Dell to fix some software fault on my PC that is quite clearly caused by Dell's own software programming being incorrect somehow.

The way I was brought up was that if you broke something of someone else's you fixed it for them free of charge.

And although my machine is not actually broken the principle is still appropriate in this case and Dell should fix this free for everyone who has the same problem as it's their software causing the problem even if it is relatively minor.

So anyway thanks again and I hope you find a proper techie solution that fixes things for you.

Oh, there is a way that I did find online where I would have to go into the registry and delete keys to do with the .dat file associations and then reinstate them with different values to free up the .dat file association.

However, that is very much like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire for me as I'm not that experienced with that kind of thing and do most definitely not want my whole machine by making a fatal error inside the Registry.

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@lmacri wrote:
... I checked and can confirm that all .DAT files on my Inspiron 5584 / Win 10 Pro v22H2 laptop are displaying the SupportAssist icon (blue circle with white wrench) as the default icon. For example, if I search C:\Programs Files for *.dat I see that .DAT files for all my non-Dell software have this icon ...

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Hi LovejoyPeacemaker:

I solved this problem on my Inspiron 5584 by uninstalling SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 (along with the SupportAssist v3.13.7.0 UWP APPx module) using Revo Uninstaller Free in Advanced (aggressive) mode and my DAT files are no longer associated with SupportAssist v3.13.7.0 UWP APPx module.  Post back if you need detailed instructions.

This is what I now see since SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 was uninstalled by Revo Uninstaller:

As an added bonus, my Dell Update for Windows Universal v4.7.1 was finally able to detect and self-to v4.8.0 (released 31-Jan-2023) once SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 was uninstalled. See my 22-Mar-2023 post in my thread Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin for Dell Update Rolled Back to v5.5.4.16189 for further details.
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I don't think it's relevant to this particular problem, but please note that I also used Revo Uninstaller Free to uninstall Dell SupportAssist OS Remediation v5.5.5.16458 (a.k.a Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools / System Repair) and an outdated Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin v5.5.4.16189 after I uninstalled SupportAssist v3.13.2.14. I don't think it's necessary to remove those two SupportAssist OS Recovery programs in order to fix the .DAT file association, it's just something I've been meaning to do for several months.

At this point I don't intend to reinstall either SupportAssist v3.x, Dell SupportAssist Remediation v5.x (a.k.a Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools / System Repair) or the Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin v5.x, so I can't tell you if a fresh reinstall of SupportAssist v3.13.2.14 would corrupt the .DAT file association again.  Please see my 22-Mar-2023 post in my thread Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin for Dell Update Rolled Back to v5.5.4.16189 for details about alternate software I'm using to replace these programs.
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64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2728 * Firefox v111.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2301.6-1.1.20100.6 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.24.248-1.0.1944 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * Dell Update for Windows Universal v4.8.0 * Revo Uninstaller Free Portable v2.4.2
Dell Inspiron 15 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

I have solved my issue by resetting all files to microsoft defaults.