[Admin]

What is Winrar

WinRAR is a tool developed by Alexandar Roshal to handle RAR files and other compression formats. It supports the following features described in its help document:

• Complete support of RAR and ZIP archives
• Highly sophisticated, original compression algorithm
• Special algorithms optimized for text, audio, graphics, 32-bit and 64-bit Intel executables compression
• Shell interface including drag-and-drop facility and wizard
• Command line interface
• Non RAR archives (7Z, ACE, ARJ, BZ2, CAB, GZ, ISO, JAR, LZH, TAR, UUE, Z) management
• Solid archiving, which can raise compression ratio by 10% - 50% over more common methods, particularly when packing a large number of small, similar files
• Multivolume archives
• Creation of self-extracting archives (also multivolume) using the default or optional SFX modules
• Recovering physically damaged archives
• Recovery volumes allowing to reconstruct missing parts of multivolume archives
• Unicode support in file names
• Other service functions, such as encryption, archive comments, error logging, etc.

Downloading and Installing Winrar

1. Set your Web browser to http://www.rarlab.com/ home page.
2. Download an evaluation copy of WinRAR, wrar342.exe. The file size is about 1.1 MB.
3. Run wrar342.exe. It will guide you to finish the installation. Make sure to install it in c:\local\winrar directory.
4. Go to Start > Programs > WinRAR > WinRAR. The "Please register" dialog box shows up.
5. Click the "Close" button to return to normal WinRAR window.
If you see the current file directory tree shows up in WinRAR window, you know your installation is done correctly.

Adding Files to Winrar

1. Run WinRAR and navigate the directory where your files are located.
2. Select the files and/or directories that you want to add to a RAR file and select menu "Commands" > "Add files to archive". The "Archive name and parameters" dialog box shows up.
3. Enter the file and location of the new RAR file, like c:\temp\test1.rar, in the "Archive name" field and click the OK button. The selected files and/or directories will be added to the RAR file.
4. Select menu File > Exit to close WinRAR.
5. Look at c:\temp\test1.rar. This is the RAR file that contains the selected files and/or directories
WinRAR seems to be more user-friendly than WinZip. It can takes files and directories together, and automatically adds sub-directories to the RAR file.

Extracting Rar Files

1. Run WinRAR and navigate to the directory where your RAR file is located.
2. Double click on the RAR file, like test1.rar. The files and directories in the RAR file will be displayed in the WinRAR window.
3. Select the files and/or directories that you want to extract and select menu "Commands" > "Extract to the specified folder". The "Extract path and options" dialog box shows up.
4. Enter the directory where you want the extracted files and/or directories to be stored, like c:\temp\test, in the "Destination path" field and click OK. The selected files and/or directories will be extracted to the specified directory.

Setting Passwords in Winrar

To stop other people extract files out of your RAR files, you can set up a password in a RAR file. Here is how:
1. Run WinRAR and navigate the directory where your files are located.
2. Select the files and/or directories that you want to add to a RAR file and select menu "Commands" > "Add files to archive". The "Archive name and parameters" dialog box shows up.
3. Click the "Advanced" tab and click the "Set password" button. The "Archiving with password" dialog box shows up.
4. Enter a password and click the OK button to close the "Archiving with password" dialog box.
5. Continue to finish adding the selected files to a RAR file.
6. Close WinRAR and run WinRAR again.
7. Navigate to the directory where the RAR is stored and double click on the RAR file. The "Enter password" dialog box shows up.
8. Enter the same password you used when creating this RAR and click the OK button.
9. The files in the RAR file will be listed in the WinRAR window.

Creating Multi Volume Rar Files

If you have large files or directories, WinRAR will normally create a single large RAR file, which is not convenient for storing it on diskette or send it as an email. In this case, you should use WinRAR's multi-volume RAR file option.
Suppose that I have a sample music file, my_music.mp3. Its file size is 4713 KB. Here are the steps to archive it to a multi-volume RAR file:
1. Run WinRAR and navigate the directory where my_music.mp3 is stored.
2. Select my_music and select menu "Commands" > "Add files to archive". The "Archive name and parameters" dialog box shows up.
3. Click the "Profiles" button. A dropdown list shows up.
4. Select the "Create 1.44MB volumes" option. Notice the following fields are changed immediately:

• Compression method: Best
• Split volumes, bytes: 1,457,664
• Create solid archive: checked
• Put recover record: checked

5. Enter c:\temp\my_music.rar in the "Archive name" field and click the OK button. my_music.pm3 will be archived into 4 files:

1,457,664 my_music.part1.rar
1,457,664 my_music.part2.rar
1,457,664 my_music.part3.rar
423,474 my_music.part4.rar

This is perfect. Now I can copy these files to 4 diskettes, or email them to a friend, who has a small mail box, one at a time.
Extracting files out of a multi-volume RAR file is easy. Here are the key steps:
1. Make sure that all volumes, *.part1.rar, *.part2.rar, ..., are in the same directory.
2. Run WinRAR and perform the extract process on any of the volumes, WinRAR knows how to extract files from all the related volumes.

Windows Explorer Context Menu

WinRAR can be configured with a number of options in the Windows Explorer context menu. There menu options provide you short cuts to different WinRAR functions. Let's setup some of them and do some tests.
1. Run WinRAR and select menu Options > Settings. The "Settings" dialog box shows up.
2. Click the "Integration" tab and the "Context menu items" button. The "Context menu items" dialog box shows up.
3. Make sure that the following options are checked:

• Extract files...
• Extract here
• Extract to <folder>
• Add to archive...
• Add to <archive name>

4. Click the OK button to close the "Context menu items" dialog box and click the OK button again to close the "Settings" dialog box.
5. Exit WinRAR.

6. Run Start > Accessories > Windows Explorer.
7. Locate a directory name that you want to compress into a RAR file.
8. Right mouse click on the directory name. The context menu shows up. You should see a number WinRAR menu items in the menu list.

Compressing Files into Zip Format

WinRAR can be used to compress files into ZIP files. Here are the steps to test this.
1. Run WinRAR and navigate the directory where your files are located.
2. Select the files and/or directories that you want to add to a RAR file and select menu "Commands" > "Add files to archive". The "Archive name and parameters" dialog box shows up.
3. Select ZIP as the "Archive format".
4. Enter c:\temp\test_rar.zip in "Archive name" field, and finish up the archiving process.
5. Exit WinRAR.
6. Run WinZip and open c:\temp\test_rar.zip. You should see the compressed files in WinZip window.
9. Select the "Add to <folder>.rar" menu item. The selected directory will be compressed into a RAR file. The new RAR file will be located in the current directory.
10. Delete the compressed directory and keep the RAR file.
11. Locate the newly created RAR file and right mouse click on the RAR file name.
12. Select the "Extract here" menu item. The compressed directory will be extract out of the RAR file.

Running WinRar in a Command Window

WinRAR also support command line operations. This is important to allow users to incorporate WinRAR commands into automated scripts. Here is a simple script I used to backup a directory, backup.bat:

@rem backup.bat
@rem Usage: backup directory zipfile password

\local\winrar\winrar a -afzip -r -p%3 %2.zip %1\*.*

My restore script is also very simple, restore.bat:

@rem restore.bat
@rem Usage: restore zipfile password

\local\winrar\winrar x -p%2 %1.zip .\

Note that:

• Command "a" is to create archive files.
• Option "-afzip" is to create archive files in ZIP format.
• Option "-r" is to take input files recursively to include sub-directories.
• Option "-p*" is to add password protection to archive files.
• Command "x" is to extract files out of archive files.

For complete description of the command line interface of WinRAR, see the WinRAR help document.

Conclusion

WinRAR displays normal files and RAR files together in a tree structure. This is very convenient to navigate through the file system and locate files.
Context menu options are nice short cuts to create or extract RAR files.
Password protection is a good feature to help you protect your privacy.
WinRAR allows you compress files in ZIP format.
Command line operation is very useful to archive files in automated scripts.
Multi-volume support is also very useful to move files on diskettes.

[rick22]

i knew what winrar is.. but never knew its technicalities... :P

From TekWiz2001 Running 2 or more Programs after extracting to temp folder

Extracts to temp folder then runs 2 programs or as many as you want...

add one program to run.. and make self extracting exe file
rename it back to rar... go to sfx comments
and add an extra Setup=program.exe
when you close it.. it will still be rar so just rename it back to exe
( the reason for the extra work is you usually can't edit
the text... read only )

another easy way to get same results is
make a comments file and import comments then edit it.

Here is working example....

;The comment below contains SFX script commands

Setup=BRemote.exe
Setup=BRPatch.exe
TempMode

[meanne2007]

Thanks for this useful information, i used winrar for my files...

[lordkira]

what?? i never knew winrar can be complicated as this.. nosebleed..

[urminenow]

thanks for the info...

[dubaimobiles]

Nice info dude.

[Vitoria Lowson]

Originally Posted by rick22

i knew what winrar is.. but never knew its technicalities... :P

Yes friends I didn't know about this.
Thanks

[Mike Tyson]

WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of the RAR Archiver, the powerful archiver and archive manager.

[fanky]

I know what is winrar? but thanks for the detailed of work done behind i never knew about its algo and working.