WinRAR offers an option to integrate tightly into the Windows operating system during installation. This includes a very handy Windows Explorer entry which can be used to unpack or pack files directly in Windows Explorer.

The WinRAR interface has been streamlined for ease of use. The professionally looking theme can be changed easily to one of the other themes that are offered on the WinRAR website.

The interface itself can be divided into an header that contains the menu and program icons that lead to the most important functions of the file compression software and the file browser which displays files and contents of archives.

A right-click on any file in the file browser opens a context menu with several options ranging from viewing, renaming or deleting files to repairing archives or setting passwords.

Some of the functions are also available directly in the header like the ability to test the archive or view a specific file in an archive. The Wizard comes in handy for first time users as it directs the user through the process of creating or unpacking archives in the program.

Other direct options include performing a virus scan of the files contained in an archive or folder. WinRAR tries to discover installed virus scanners automatically which can then be selected from a pulldown menu. The user does have the option to browse the computer for a specific virus scanner and use that to scan the files which is handy for portable virus scanners or those that are not recognized by the automatic scan.

It is furthermore possible to add comments to archives and make them self extracting. The latter option can be handy in situations if no file compression software is installed on the target system or if the user of the target system wants (or requires) the easiest way of unpacking archived files (which self extracting archives are as they can be extracted with a simple double-click).

The Tools menu contains several advanced options like the tool to convert archives into rar or zip format. This is actually a very handy solution to convert multiple archives (that might have been compressed with different file compression algorithms) into a standard format like rar or zip. An option to add all archives of a specific format to that menu would be very handy. As of now it is only possible to add archives manually to the list.

Advanced users will like the amount of options that are provided during archive creation. The six-tabbed interface comes with so many options that it might look intimidating to some users although it is possible to simply click on the OK button to create the archive. Those users who look at the options provided on the other hand will find handy ones including the ability to change the compression level, splitting the files into several archives, adding a recovery record to the archive, setting passwords (that use the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm), wiping files after archive creation, storing full or relative paths or sending the archive by email.

WinRAR features

• WinRAR provides complete support for RAR and ZIP archives and is able to unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, 7Z, Z archives.
• WinRAR offers a graphic interactive interface utilizing mouse and menus as well as the command line interface.
• WinRAR is easier to use than many other archivers with the inclusion of a special “Wizard” mode which allows instant access to the basic archiving functions through a simple question and answer procedure. This avoids confusion in the early stages of use.
• WinRAR offers you the benefit of industry strength archive encryption using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a key of 128 bits.
• WinRAR supports files and archives up to 8,589 billion gigabytes in size. The number of archived files is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.
• WinRAR offers the ability to create selfextracting and multivolume archives.
• Recovery record and recovery volumes allow to reconstruct even physically damaged archives.

Verdict:

WinRAR is a powerful file compression program for the Windows operating system that is suited for both inexperienced and advanced users. Especially advanced options like batch converting archives, adding recovery information to archives or the command line options make WinRAR a prime choice for all archiving needs. Interested users can download a trial version at the WinRAR download page.

Christmas Giveaway

Readers who leave a comment get the chance to win a WinRAR licenses. We have ten licenses for WinRAR 3.90 in this giveaway. Please tell us why you use WinRAR, if you use it, or why you don’t use WinRAR, if you don’t use it. We will select the best 10 insightful comments as our winners, regardless whether they use WinRAR or not.

Raju is giving away licenses for Speedbit Video Accerlerator today, be sure to check out his giveaway as well.

Possible scenarios are that you forgot the password of a previously created rar archive or that a former employee protected files with a rar password. Whatever it is the rar password cracker will aid the user. The tool utilizes password lists, also called dictionary files, to test against the rar password.

Rar Pass Finder is a portable lightweight tool. The interface is only available in German language but since it consists of only two buttons it does not really make a different. The user should start loading a rar password list using the Passwortliste button.

Rar archives can then be loaded using the Rar-Archiv button or drag and drop. The rar password cracker supports multiple volumes and can also be run from the command line to load an archive automatically into the application. The last loaded password list will automatically be used to find the rar password.

Interested users can also use the offer to update to the newest version of Winrar at a discount. If you are interested in the offer visit the promotional Winrar website. The website is written in German, all you need to to is fill out the form and the license key will be send to your email. Here is the translation of the fields: Vorname (First Name), Nachname (Last Name), E-Mail-Adresse (E-Mail), E-Mail bestätigen: (E-Mail again) and Land (Country).

Select Anderes Land in the pulldown menu if you are not living in one of the mentioned countries. A click on Abschicken (send) completes the process and you should receive a link to the key in your email. The link to the key is the second link in the email that contains download.php while the first link would lead to the special offer page that would offer a discount for the latest Winrar version.

A click on “Download des Lizenzschlüssels” downloads the key to your computer. Download Winrar 3.62, for example from Download Junction and install it on your system. Now unpack the contents of the archive that you have downloaded into the Winrar folder. The key will be automatically recognized by Winrar and you got a licensed version.

I knew that it was possible to mark more than one file and extract it at once using the right-click menu function but I did not know how to handle archives with multiple volumes. The obvious way to handle those files would be to mark them all and extract them but this did not work because only the first volume of an archive has to be selected to unpack it.

My first test brought the correct result though. I marked all the 24 rar files (change that to zip or whatever format you are dealing with) and right-clicked one of them. I then selected Extract Here like I would when extracting single archives and all the 24 rar files where extracted at once.

This is in my opinion a great time saver and will hopefully help at least some users who were facing the same problem.

To use Quickpar you simply add one or more files that you want to split into parts, select a file size for those parts and the amount of Recovery blocks that can be used to recover the archive if files do get corrupted.This is excellent if you want to backup important files, videos or pictures on CD or DVD.

We all know that sometimes those CDs and DVDs become partly unreadable and the created pars can be used to recover the complete archive even though part of it could not be read.

It is possible to alter several other settings before splitting the big file and creating the pars but that is normally not necessary. You could raise the block size for instance. The user could also keep the original file and create pars for it to be able to recover it if put on CD or DVD or transferred over the Internet.

Files can be recovered by clicking on any par file that is created in the process. Quickpar will automatically load the archive and check all files within to see if any are corrupted. If they are it tries to repair those corrupt blocks automatically if enough par blocks exist.

The name of the command is different depending on the application that you use to unrar files normally. My packer IZArc has its own entry in the right-click menu and I can select Extract Here from the personal menu to extract all rar files that I have selected.

It took a while until I stumbled upon this method. Before that I really extracted every rar file on its own which takes a while if you have dozens of independent rar files on your computer. I thought I share this method even though I might be the last person on earth that found it.