Windows 10: BootTel.dat

Curiosity has got the best of me! I have this file on my c drive and have no idea what it is. Cannot find any info on it?

Ron

:)

 

"BootTel.dat" File discovered in C:

And what's boot.dat ?! I've got no "boot.dat".

I've got c:\bootTel.dat on 1 laptop it has 72B (a little too little in my opinion to boot something on that) also there are "BOOTNXT" 1B (\x00) and a bootmgr 388.8 kB (this is more likely to bootsomething). All of those files are binary files.

On an another laptop I have no "boot*"files.

Any explanation on what this file is or what is it's purpose would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

"BootTel.dat" File discovered in C:

Boottel.dat is nothing more than a version of Boot.dat,

It belongs to Windows 10 16299.15 installation,

People are mistaking it for a computer virus, malware etc it is not,

If you notice Microsoft is rename lot of their services and files inorder to protect there operating system.

if anything I say it was an oversight on Microsoft part to change the boot.dat files as bat files usually design for windows 95 to Windows 2003 to assign instructions to where boot up records are when Administers decide to change the partitions and or to
auto start exe files to open a particular application or folder.

Boot.dat files are really not need any more unless your older computer user want a particular program to open at start up or modifying where your boot files are located.

 

A quick google search would suggest it may be malicious in some way. Best to run a malware scan and see what that says. dont run a quick scan tho, run a full scan.

 

I've been wondering about that BootTel.dat file myself. Neither Windows Defender or Malwarebytes complain about it and according to VirusTotal it's clean.

 

Likewise, nothing shows it to be dangerous but also nothing I can find shows what it is!
Ron

 

I'm not recommending this ...
Since I couldn't find any info on the BootTel.dat file, I decided to see if it's actually need for boot, etc. I renamed it BootTel.dat.bak and rebooted with no issues, then did a shut down and start up with no issues. Still no clue where it came from or what it is, but it didn't exist until 10/20/2017 according to it's file date.

 

My file date is 11/12/2017. OCD about explanations and there appears to be none for this file. Will delete it and go from there
Ron

 

Interesting. I can't find any scoop or usable info on this anywhere. Inspecting the file contents in Notepad++ doesn't shed any light, either. It's mostly made up of NUL characters with very little actual data, none of that amenable to "interpretation by inspection." But as a member of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" club I'll leave it be for now. Perhaps somebody else can come up with more info?
--Ed--

 

I wonder if that BootTel.dat has something to do with the 1709 manual update? IIRC, I waited a couple days to see if it would show up thru Windows Update and when it didn't, I manually updated both my systems using MCT / USB stick, around 10/20/2017.