Questions listed in this FAQ
Q: I still cannot understand how to use WinRAR to extract files.
Q: I've heard a lot about "Solid" archives. What are they and how can I use them?
Q: Where can I get the latest releases of WinRAR?
Q: I received "checksum error" message when extracting. What does it mean?
Q: I forgot my password, please help me!
Q: Why WinRAR does not delete its temporary files in the Windows temporary folder?
Q: Why WinRAR does not use the maximum dictionary size for my archive?
Questions and answers
Q: I still cannot understand how to use WinRAR to extract files.
A: Please read Shell and command line mode topic. It contains pointers to descriptions of several different ways to extract files.
Q: RAR incorporates a number of different compression "methods", what are the advantages and disadvantages of using them and which one would you recommend for daily use?
A: I tried to answer to this question in the topic How to choose optimal archiving settings.
Q: I've heard a lot about "Solid" archives. What are they and how can I use them?
A: Please see the topic Solid archives.
Q: How could a user of my site (E-mail system, FTP server etc.) extract files from RAR archives while RAR is shareware and one must register after a 40 day evaluation period?
A: The RAR distribution archive contains a free UnRAR utility, UnRAR.EXE, which can be used, without paying a license fee, by anyone wanting to extract archives created by RAR. As an additional BONUS to this, the source code of a portable UnRAR is available on www.rarlab.com. Note that the RAR algorithm is proprietary and you must not use UnRAR sources to reverse engineer it.
Q: Where can I get the latest releases of WinRAR?
A: Visit WinRAR home page www.rarlab.com.
Q: I received "checksum error" message when extracting. What does it mean?
A: The extracted file is corrupt either because of archive damage or problems with hardware. If an archive is damaged, but has a recovery record, you may try to repair it, otherwise it is impossible to restore damaged data. Note that in the case of solid archive all files after a damaged file will be lost.
Q: I failed to extract files from a solid multivolume RAR archive, because one archive volume was damaged. Help me!
A:
If you have recovery volumes for your
archive, place them to the same folder as your RAR volumes and double click
on the first recovery volume (REV file) to start recovery.
If recovery volumes are not available of if they did not help,
try to apply Repair command to
the damaged volume. Then rename the recovered volume, fixed.arcname.rar
(or rebuilt.arcname.rar if recovery record was not found) to the actual
volume name and try to unpack your archive again, starting from the first
volume.
If you wish to improve chances of your multivolume RAR archives to
be successfully repaired in case of data damage, use the recovery record
and recovery volumes when creating them and better avoid
solid archiving mode, even though
non-solid archiving can result in a lower compression ratio.
Q: I forgot my password, please help me!
A: WinRAR encryption does not have any backdoors. Even if we forget a password to any of our archives, we will not be able to restore it. So please do not ask us to help in this situation.
Q: Why WinRAR does not delete its temporary files in the Windows temporary folder?
A: It happens when you use drag and drop to extract files or open
archived files with an external viewer. In such case files may still
be in use when closing WinRAR and moreover, there is no reliable way
to detect if the external program still needs these unpacked files.
So WinRAR does not delete them immediately, instead, when you run WinRAR
the next time, all temporary files older than one hour will be deleted.
If you do not want to involve the temporary folder when extracting
files at all, use either "Extract To" command in WinRAR shell or "Extract
To" item in the archive context menu instead of drag and drop.
Q: Why WinRAR does not use the maximum dictionary size for my archive?
A: Even if you specified the maximum dictionary size in the compression settings, WinRAR may automatically decrease this value when creating a new archive if the total archived data size is at least twice less than dictionary size. It does not hurt compression and allows to reduce memory requirements.