Archive file repair guides
Guides for repairing damaged archive files (ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR), recovering files from corrupted archives, and fixing extraction errors.
Symptom guides
- Incomplete ZIP Download: How to Recover an Interrupted Archive
Practical fixes for incomplete ZIP downloads. When re-downloading isn't possible, command-line tools and partial extraction can salvage usable files.
- ZIP Files Created on Windows Won't Extract on Mac (and Vice Versa)
Cross-platform ZIP problems: garbled filenames, unwanted .DS_Store files, encoding mismatches, and the tools that handle each scenario correctly.
Error message guides
- Fix "Cannot open file as archive" Error in 7-Zip and WinRAR
How to fix the "Cannot open file as archive" error from 7-Zip and WinRAR. What the error actually means, how to diagnose the cause, and how to recover the file.
- Fix "CRC failed in the encrypted file. Wrong password?" Error
Why 7-Zip and WinRAR show "CRC failed in the encrypted file. Wrong password?" — and how to tell whether the password is wrong or the archive is corrupted.
- Fix "The archive is either in unknown format or damaged" Error
How to fix the "archive is either in unknown format or damaged" error in 7-Zip and WinRAR. Causes, diagnostics, and step-by-step fixes ranked by success rate.