i am a windows user and i use notepad to open up .dat files and i have no problems, but then again, all of the .dat files that i read are pretty small (50 characters max). BTW-Kimeramon thats just Kazaa's mistake because it stores the song you were listenning in memory (not sure what part), then when you "kill" the download, the part of the song that is downloaded still is in your memory until it is over written by another song. It is bad programming on their part...