Browser displays nonsense characters in htm files

[DavePL]

I'm running Windows 98 with IE6sp1 and when I double click on an htm file (that was created in Wordpad), it displays a lot of formatting characters on the page. Some of it says " ms word 6 document, default paragraph font...", as well as a lot of nonsense characters.
The characters appear even when viewing a blank wordpad file with an ".htm" file extension. On our web page, the file appears normal. It only occurs when we view certain htm files on the C: drive with IE6.
This problem did not occur last year and I wonder if updates to to IE6 may have caused it?

 

[tviman]

Don't use wordpad - it's a scaled down version of Word and will include it's formatting characters. Use notepad instead. There's always a better way...

 

[DavePL]

Yes, that solves it!
Much appreciate your comments.