Latest changes in WinRAR WinRAR - What's new in the latest version Version 5.91 1. Dialogs are centered inside of WinRAR window similarly to WinRAR 5.80 and not inside of entire screen as in WinRAR 5.90. 2. When editing an archived file with external software, extra measures are taken to reduce the probability of interfering with editor and opening its temporary files while editor still may need them. 3. "Version to extract" field in archive properties opened from Windows Explorer context menu provides the additional information about ZIP compression and encryption algorithms, such as LZMA or AES. This information was already available in WinRAR "Info" command, but missed in archive information accessible from Windows Explorer. 4. "MS DOS" and "Unix" host OS types are recognized and included for LZH archives in "Info" command. Previously the host OS field was always "Unknown" for LZH archive format. 5. Files created by external editor and matching "Settings/Viewer/ Ignore modifications for" masks are never added to archive. Previously WinRAR still added them if some file not matching these masks was also created or modified. 6. Bugs fixed: a) empty file names were displayed inside of some Unix LZH archives; b) WinRAR could not process more than 999 7z volumes in a single set; c) if user cancelled the user account control prompt after changing "Integrate WinRAR into shell" option, a new state of this option was displayed in "Settings" dialog, even though the actual state of shell integration was not modified; d) the main window size could be too small on the first run after clean install with no previous WinRAR version present; e) WinRAR could stop responding after editing an archived file with external software in Windows 10 version 2004. Version 5.90 1. RAR compression speed is improved for CPUs with 16 and more cores. 2. "Fastest" method (-m1 command line equivalent) typically achieves a higher compression ratio for highly compressible data types when creating RAR5 archives. 3. Maximum number of utilized threads is increased from 32 to 64. Command line -mt<threads> switch accepts values from 1 to 64. 4. "Multithreading" parameter on "General" page of WinRAR settings is replaced with "Threads" input field, where you can specify the desired number of CPU threads. It can take values from 1 to maximum number of available logical CPU units. 5. WinRAR displays packed and unpacked folder sizes when browsing archive contents. 6. "Total folders" field is added to list of archive parameters displayed by WinRAR "Info" command. Same field is added to "Archive" page in archive properties in Windows Explorer. 7. Window including a progress bar and "Cancel" button is displayed if reading archive contents takes noticeable time. It can be useful for archive formats with slower access to contents, such as large TAR based archives like .tar.gz and tar.bz2. 8. Archiving and extraction progress windows, also as progress windows for some other commands, can be resized. 9. "Repair" performance for RAR5 archives with recovery record and without data shifts is improved. It deteriorated in WinRAR 5.80 and is now restored to original level. 10. Password prompt is not issued when performing recovery record based repair for RAR5 archives with encrypted file names. This command can be performed without providing a password. 11. If folder for converted archives in "Convert archives" command does not exist, WinRAR attempts to create it. Previous versions failed to create converted archives in non-existent destination folder. 12. Added extraction support for GZIP archives with optional header checksum field. 13. Bugs fixed: a) "Repair" command could erroneously display "Recovery record is corrupt" message when processing an archive with valid recovery record. This message did not prevent further repair operation; b) if quick open information option was set to "Do not add" in default compression profile and this profile was loaded by some command or dialog, WinRAR ignored quick open information when browsing contents of RAR archives. For example, it happened after opening archiving or password dialogs; c) Ctrl+C "Copy" shortcut key did not work in archive comment window; d) if "Put each file to separate archive" and "Archives in subfolders" options were set, WinRAR ignored the destination path specified in archive name field. Version 5.80 1. "Preserve source files last access time" option on "Time" page of archiving dialog permits to preserve the original last access time of archiving files. 2. Command line -tsp switch can be used to preserve the original last access time of archiving files. It can be combined with other -ts switches, like: rar a -tsc -tsp arcname files 3. It is allowed to combine several modifiers in the same -ts switch. For example, we can use -tscap instead -tsc -tsa -tsp. 4. WinRAR can read default values of command line switches from rar.ini text file, which can be stored either in the same folder as WinRAR.exe or in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder. This file includes strings in following format: switches=<any RAR switches separated by spaces> switches_<command>=<any RAR switches separated by spaces> First applies switches to all and second to individual commands. For example: switches=-m5 -s switches_x=-o+ Most of switches specified in rar.ini are used only in the command line mode. Some switches can be applicable both in shell and in command line modes. Previously this rar.ini format was supported only by console RAR. 5. Command line -agf<default_format> switch specifies the default format string for -ag switch. It has a practical value only if placed to rar.ini configuration file or to RAR environment variable. For example, if we set RAR environment variable to -agfYYYY-MMM-DD, we can use -ag without a parameter with YYYY-MMM-DD format string assumed. 6. Switches -ed and -e+d can be used in archive processing commands for any combination of RAR and archive operating systems. In older versions RAR for Windows could not use them for Unix RAR archives also as RAR for Unix for Windows RAR archives. 7. Previously "Test" command failed to check integrity of archived NTFS alternate data streams and issued "Unknown data header format" warning if size of such stream exceeded 16 MB. This limitation is removed now. 8. Archiving speed for large NTFS alternate data streams on multi-core CPUs is increased. 9. "Find" command: a) when extracting encrypted files directly from "Search results" dialog, password prompt was issued for every found file even if all files belonged to same archive. Now password is requested only once per archive; b) Ctrl+A hotkey selects all files in "Search results". 10. Archive comment window: a) previous versions did not allow to use Ctrl+W shortcut to close WinRAR when comment window had keyboard focus. Now Ctrl+W works also from comment window; b) mouse wheel is supported also for comments with ANSI Escape sequences; c) for some lenghty comments with ANSI Escape sequences last line of comment was visible only partially even after scrolling up to bottom. It is displayed comletely now. 11. Maximum path length for files in 7z archives is increased up to 2048 characters. While such lengthy paths were already supported for RAR and ZIP formats, previous versions limited the path length to 260 characters for 7z archives. 12. If archive or file name is too lengthy to fit to archiving or extraction progress window, it is truncated. Previously such names were truncated at the end, making the file extension invisible. This version truncates them removing the path component and symbols in the middle, but preserving beginning of file name and file extension. 13. If files selected for archiving differ only by extension, a proposed archive name is based on their name part. For example, archiving dialog will propose Readme.rar if we selected Readme.txt and Readme.doc. Previous versions always generated the archive name based on parent folder name for several selected files. 14. "Symlink" and "Hardlink" is diplayed in "Type" column for symlink and hardlink records in .tar archives. Previous versions displayed a proper type for such records only in .rar archives. 15. Copying and pasting files from large archives could fail if extraction took a lot of time. This version can paste files from such archives as well, but we have to start extraction already on "Copy" command and not on "Paste" to achieve this. 16. Similarly to RAR5 volumes, recovery volumes in RAR4 format use the same width of volume number field as corresponding RAR volumes. While previously WinRAR could create arc.part01.rar and arc.part1.rev in RAR4 format, now both types of volumes will use "part01". 17. "Set font..." button in "Settings/File list" also changes the folder tree panel font. Previously it changed only the file list font. 18. "Find files" and command line mode "i" commands: a) if "Use all tables" option or "t" modifer of "i" command are used, additionally to already supported ANSI, OEM and UTF-16 encodings WinRAR will search the specified string in UTF-8 files as well; b) better support for Unicode text strings; c) better performance, especially for case insensitive search; d) hexadecimal search output includes both text and hexadecimal representation of found matches. 19. File and total progress bar is displayed when unpacking tar.bz2, tar.gz, tar.lz, tar.xz, tar.z archives. Previously only the total progress was displayed properly for tar.bz2, tar.gz and tar.z. Neither file nor total progress was displayed for tar.lz and tar.xz. 20. "File list/Files/Exact sizes" option also changes the file size format in WinRAR status bar. 21. Bugs fixed: a) if non-existent path is specified in archive name in archiving dialog, WinRAR proposes to create such path. Previous versions could create such path in WinRAR start-up folder instead of currently displayed folder; b) WinRAR could crash when adding the recovery record in RAR5 format on CPUs not supporting CPUID EAX=7 command and returning random data in response. These are some CPUs from early 2000s; c) WinRAR failed to create archives after dragging files with right mouse button in Windows shell, dropping them to another folder, selecting "Add to archive..." in context menu and enabling "Put each file to separate archive" option; d) "winrar r *.zip" command repaired only the first ZIP archive in the set if all archives had numeric names like 1.zip, 2.zip and signatures in the beginning of archives were missing; e) previous WinRAR version failed to unpack folder records in archives created by RAR 1.50; f) in rare cases WinRAR failed to extract and reported an error for valid .gz archives produced by some compression optimization tools; g) progress bar in tray icon never reached 100% in high DPI mode; h) creation and last access time was not displayed for archived folders if folder records were stored in archive after folder contents; i) "Skip encrypted archives" option in "Convert archives" command did not work for 7-Zip archives with headers encryption. Version 5.71 1. "Convert archives" command: a) improved performance when processing a lot of small archives in Windows 10; b) fixed memory leaks which could lead to excessive memory use when converting to ZIP format. 2. Corrupt ZIP archive processing: a) "Repair" command replaces packed and unpacked file sizes stored in local file header with sizes from central directory if local header sizes look invalid; b) file extraction is stopped at unpacked size stored in ZIP headers even if available packed data allows further extraction. It is done to prevent unexpected hard drive space usage. 3. Ctrl+C allows to abort RAR "l" command quickly. In previous versions it could take several seconds until list command stopped. 4. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR could crash when attempting to display some types of archive comments in GUI shell, resulting in a denial of service; b) if "Save archive name" and "Add to context menu" options were set in compression profile parameters and profile was invoked from Explorer context menu, WinRAR proposed an automatically generated archive name instead of name saved in profile. c) WinRAR displayed an unneeded pair of round brackets in "Archive" column of "Diagnostic messages" window for system error messages; d) "Extract to folder\" Windows Explorer context menu command could fail to unpack ZIP archives if their names included a numeric part followed by .zip extension, arbitrary data was present before the first file record and "Remove redundant folders from extraction path" WinRAR option was switched on; e) in "RAR x -x<mask> arcname" command, parent folders of files matching the specified mask also were excluded from extracting; f) "Find" command returned the current folder own name additionally to its contents for "Current folder" search area if folder name matched "File names to find" mask; g) if "Find in files" and "Find in archives" are both enabled, "Find" command did not match an archive name itself against "File names to find" mask after searching inside of archive. So it did not display archive names for masks like *.rar and applied this mask only to files inside of archives; h) when running an executable directly from archive, WinRAR 5.70 did not set a temporary folder with unpacked files as current. So executables attempting to access other archived files in current folder could fail to work; i) WinRAR could be inaccessible for few seconds after closing an archived file opened in internal viewer in Windows 10; j) dragging a file to subfolder of ZIP archive with "Store full paths" option enabled produced invalid pathnames consisting of repeated subfolder name. Same invalid pathnames were produced if adding files to ZIP archive with -ap<folder> -ep2 switches. Version 5.70 1. "Files to process" option on "Time" page of archiving dialog allows to choose files based on modification, creation or last access file time. Previously it was possible for modification time only. 2. Command line -ta, -tb, -tn, -to switches accept 'm', 'c' and 'a' modifiers after the switch name. So file time conditions can include not only the file modification time as in previous versions, but also creation and last access time. Such switch can include multiple modifiers to set the same date for all specified times. For example, -tamc20190215 will process files modified and created after 2019-02-15. New 'o' modifier permits to switch from AND to OR logic, so -tamco20190215 includes files modified or created after 2019-02-15. It is also allowed to specify several time filtering switches with different dates in the same command line, like: -taco20190201 -tbmo20190210 Switches -ta and -tn also include files matching the specified date exactly. Switches -tb and -to exclude such files. 3. WinRAR file list can display creation and last access file times if they are available. Creation and last access columns are disabled by default and can be enabled in "Select file list columns" dialog. This dialog is opened after right clicking on file list column headers or after pressing "File list/Files/Columns..." button in WinRAR settings. 4. "Double extensions for archives" and "Archives in subfolders" options on "Files" page of archiving dialog modify behavior of "Put each file to separate archive" option. You can switch between archive names in filename.ext.rar and filename.rar style with "Double extensions for archives". You can create a separate archive for every file in selected subfolders or store the entire contents of every selected folder in separate archive depending on the state of "Archives in subfolders" option. 5. New -ad1 switch can be used when unpacking multiple archives recursively, such as 'rar x -r -ad1 arc\*.rar'. It creates a separate folder for files unpacked from each archive, but unlike already existing -ad switch, it creates such folders in each archive folder. 6. If context menu "Extract each archive to separate folder" is applied to archives from different folders in Windows Explorer "Search results", subfolders with unpacked files are created in each archive folder. Previous versions created them all in a folder of right clicked archive. 7. New "File list/List style/Checkboxes" option in WinRAR settings allows to use checkboxes to select file list items. 8. New "File list/Files/Exact sizes" option in WinRAR settings. If this option is on, file sizes are always displayed in bytes. If it is off, sizes are rounded up and use units such as KB or MB. Smaller files can be still displayed in bytes. 9. If several console RAR are started with -ioff switch, PC is turned off by RAR copy finished last. Previously this switch was processed by first finished copy. 10. Read and write buffer size is increased for .iso files. It can help to improve .iso extraction performance in some cases, such as for network drives. 11. If "Delete archive" option in extraction dialog is applied to a set of RAR and REV volumes in volname.part# format, WinRAR will delete REV volumes as well. Previously only RAR volumes were deleted keeping REV files intact. 12. If "Delete archive" option in extraction dialog is applied to set of ZIP volumes with .zip.001, .zip.002, .zip.003 extensions, WinRAR will delete all ZIP volumes. Previously only .zip.001 volume was deleted for such volume naming scheme. 13. If we unpack arcname.rar using "Extract to arcname\" Explorer context menu command and "arcname" file already exists, WinRAR shell extension will propose "Extract to arcname~1\" instead. Previously this context menu command attempted to create a folder with same name as already existing file and failed. 14. If we pack a shortcut file with .lnk extension from Explorer context menu, .lnk file itself is added to archive. Previous versions added .lnk file target instead of .lnk file. 15. Windows does not allow executables exceeding 4 GB, so WinRAR issues an error immediately when attempting to create 4 GB or larger RAR SFX volumes. Previously WinRAR issued such error only after creating the first RAR volume. 16. Total extraction progress is displayed for 7z multivolume archives. Accuracy of 7z total extraction progress is improved. 17. "Find" command "Disks and folders" drop down list has been renamed to "Search area". Additionally to already existing choices, it includes a new "Selected items" option restricting search to files and folders selected in WinRAR file list. 18. "Find" command displays the number of found items in status bar. 19. "Diagnostic messages" window displays archive names in a separate column to provide the better message visibility for lengthy archive names. 20. Switch -isnd[-] in command line WinRAR mode allows to override "Enable sound" option in WinRAR settings. Use -isnd to turn sound notifications on and -isnd- to turn them off. 21. Nadav Grossman from Check Point Software Technologies informed us about a security vulnerability in UNACEV2.DLL library. Aforementioned vulnerability makes possible to create files in arbitrary folders inside or outside of destination folder when unpacking ACE archives. WinRAR used this third party library to unpack ACE archives. UNACEV2.DLL had not been updated since 2005 and we do not have access to its source code. So we decided to drop ACE archive format support to protect security of WinRAR users. We are thankful to Check Point Software Technologies for reporting this issue. 22. Bugs fixed: a) console RAR mixed up source and destination file sizes and times in the overwrite prompt when updating a file in RAR archive with -o switch; b) dragging files from 32-bit applications to 64-bit WinRAR window did not work; c) WinRAR Shift+Del command applied to a folder could fail to delete some its subfolders. This command is used to delete files and folders permanently instead of moving them to Recycle Bin; d) folder tree panel could not change folders if archived pathnames started from path separator, such as in archives created by tar tool with --absolute-names option; e) if relative "Path=.\somefolder" was specified in SFX comment and SFX archive needed to elevate privileges when extracting, it created 'somefolder\somefolder' instead of 'somefolder'; f) commands modifying an existing RAR4 volume reset the volume number field to 1. While it did not affect extraction, WinRAR displayed a wrong volume number for such volumes; g) fixed a crash when reading a comment from a corrupt RAR file; h) toolbar in "Find" command "Search results" window was not adjusted to different toolbar icon sizes properly. Version 5.61 1. "Delete archive" extraction option deletes all volumes even if user started extraction from non-first RAR volume, but first volume is present and all files are unpacked successfully. In such case previous versions ignored "Delete archive" even if WinRAR was able to locate the first volume and process the volume set from beginning. 2. Compression ratio bar is not displayed on "Archive" page of Explorer file properties for archives with encrypted file names. WinRAR cannot reliably calculate it for such archives without a password and previously it just displayed 0% here. 3. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR displayed "The specified password is incorrect" message infinitely when attempting to open RAR5 archive with encrypted file names if wrong global password was set with Ctrl+P; b) memory management bug in the password dialog could lead to access to already freed memory followed by crash. This issue may be also associated with security risks; c) fixed crashes in corrupt RAR, ACE and LZH archives. This issue may be also associated with security risks; d) while starting, WinRAR could cause a brief flickering in menu bars of few other applications; e) WinRAR "Find" command matched "String to find" against all archived files ignoring "File names to find" mask when searching in CAB archives; f) SFX module "License" command did not set a title of license window; g) if "Start-up folder" in WinRAR settings included the trailing backslash, WinRAR ignored first "Up one level" command. Version 5.60 1. We updated WinRAR graphics. We are grateful to http://weirdsgn.com and http://icondesignlab.com designers participated in this endeavor and proud to announce that WinRAR uses the new icon set prepared by Aditya Nugraha Putra from http://weirdsgn.com. Previous WinRAR icons are available as interface theme here: https://rarlab.com/themes/WinRAR_Classic_48x36.theme.rar 2. "Repair" command efficiency is improved for recovery record protected RAR5 archives. Now it can detect deletions and insertions of unlimited size also as shuffled data including data taken from several recovery record protected archives and merged into a single file in arbitrary order. 3. "Turn PC off when done" archiving option is changed to "When done" drop down list, so you can turn off, hibernate or sleep your PC after completing archiving. 4. Use -ioff or -ioff1 command line switch to turn PC off, -ioff2 to hibernate and -ioff3 to sleep your PC after completing an operation. 5. If encoding of comment file specified in -z<file> switch is not defined with -sc switch, RAR attempts to detect UTF-8, UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE encodings based on the byte order mask and data validity tests. 6. WinRAR attempts to detect ANSI, OEM and UTF-8 encodings of ZIP archive comments automatically. 7. "Internal viewer/Use DOS encoding" option in "Settings/Viewer" is replaced with "Internal viewer/Autodetect encoding". If "Autodetect encoding" is enabled, the internal viewer attempts to detect ANSI (Windows), OEM (DOS), UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings. 8. Normally Windows Explorer context menu contains only extraction commands if single archive has been right clicked. You can override this by specifying one or more space separated masks in "Always display archiving items for" option in Settings/Integration/Context menu items", so archiving commands are always displayed for these file types even if file was recognized as archive. If you wish both archiving and extraction commands present for all archives, place "*" here. 9. SFX module "SetupCode" command accepts an optional integer parameter allowing to control mapping of setup program and SFX own error codes. It is also accessible as "Exit code adjustment" option in "Advanced SFX options/Setup" dialog. 10. New "Show more information" WinRAR command line -im switch. It can be used with "t" command to issue a message also in case of successful archive test result. Without this switch "t" command completes silently if no errors are found. This switch is applicable only to WinRAR.exe and ignored by console RAR.exe. 11. If a wrong password is entered when unpacking an encrypted file in ZIP archive, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password for same file again instead of aborting extraction. 12. If a wrong password is entered when opening or unpacking RAR archive with encrypted file names, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password again instead of aborting the operation. Previous versions already did so for RAR archives with encrypted file data, but aborted for archives with file name encryption. 13. WinRAR recognizes GZIP files with arbitrary data preceding an actual GZIP archive, such as .scexe firmware files. 14. @filelist parameter can be specified in "Files to add" field of archiving dialog. In this case WinRAR will attempt the list of archiving files from 'filelist' file, which should be the plain text, one file name per line. 15. Info dialog: a) compression ratio graph is updated; b) "Names and data" is displayed in "Encryption" field for archives with encrypted file names. 16. Full archive name is displayed if mouse pointer is placed over an archive name in the operation progress window. It can be useful if archive name is lengthy and does not fit to available window space. 17. If -ts1 switch is used with -u or -f, file time comparison is performed with 1 second precision. Previosuly in such case we could wrongly treat an adding file as newer than archived just because we compared the high precision adding file time against the low precision archived file time. 18. "Update" and "Fresh" commands ('u' and 'f' in the command line mode) quit immediately if no files are to be updated. Previously they created a temporary archive before quitting when updating archives with recovery record or quick open information. 19. Prompt is issued after creating 500 volumes from WinRAR GUI shell, so user can continue or quit further archiving. It is done to prevent creating many thousands of volumes in case of wrongly entered volume size. 20. WinRAR uses megabytes instead of bytes as default units for volume size field in the archiving dialog. 21. "Repair" command issues "Recovery record is corrupt" message after repairing RAR5 archive containing a broken recovery record. Previously such message was issued only by "Test" command and "Repair" handled most of recovery record damages silently. 22. Bugs fixed: a) fixed potential security issues when processing corrupt RAR archives; b) non-English characters in TAR files with PAX extended headers were not displayed correctly; c) "rar x arcname.rar .." command unpacked files to current folder instead of its parent; d) pasting files from Windows Explorer to archive opened in WinRAR blocked further copy and paste operations in Explorer until archiving was finished; e) SFX module issued "The specified password is incorrect" message infinitely not prompting for correct password once a wrong password was entered; f) folders time was always set when extracting ZIP archives even if "File time" options in the extraction dialog were turned off; g) if "Delete archive: Always" was selected when extracting and user pressed "Cancel" in the file overwrite or password prompt, an archive could be deleted even after cancelling extraction for .zip and .7z formats. Version 5.50 1. WinRAR and command line RAR use RAR 5.0 archive format by default. You can change it to RAR 4.x compatible format with "RAR4" option in archiving dialog or -ma4 command line switch. If you prefer RAR 4.x format by default, use "Create default..." button on "Compression" page of WinRAR settings and set "RAR4" in the displayed dialog. This change affects only new clean installs. If you already saved RAR format in the default compression profile in previous versions, WinRAR respects stored settings. 2. Use "Set master password" button in "Organize passwords" dialog to encrypt saved password records and protect them from unauthorized access. If saved passwords are protected with master password, you need to enter the master password and press "OK" in password prompt to access them. If entered password does not match the master password, it is treated as a usual password for archive operations. Once entered, the master password is valid until WinRAR is closed. Close WinRAR and open it again after specifying the master password if you wish to see how protection works. Enter a valid and then empty master password to remove encryption from previously protected password records. This WinRAR version uses a new data format for password organizer, so passwords stored in "Organize passwords" dialog are not readable by older versions. It does not affect archive encryption formats and encrypted archives are compatible with previous WinRAR version. Organizer data is converted to a new format only when you save it and not immediately after installing WinRAR. 3. Prompt proposing to set the master password is displayed when storing a password in compression profile. You can enter the master password to encrypt password data stored in Registry and protect it from unauthorized access. You will need to enter the master password in password prompt dialog to access such compression profile after that. Once entered, the master password is valid until WinRAR is closed. Close WinRAR and open it again after specifying the master password if you wish to see how protection works. 4. By default, WinRAR uses AES-256 in CTR mode to encrypt ZIP archives. While AES-256 is significantly more secure than ZIP 2.0 legacy encryption algorithm, it can be incompatible with some older unzip software. If compatibility with such tools is required, you can enable "ZIP legacy encryption" option in the password dialog or use -mezl switch in the command line mode. 5. Added extraction support for .LZ archives created by Lzip compressor. 6. Modern TAR tools can store high precision file times, lengthy file names and large file sizes in special PAX extended headers inside of TAR archive. Now WinRAR supports such PAX headers and uses them when extracting TAR archives. 7. New "Store modification time" option on "Time" page of archiving dialog can be used to prohibit storing the file modification time in RAR 5.x archives. Former "High precision modification time" option is replaced by "High precision time format". 8. New "Full paths in title bar" option in "Settings/General" dialog. If enabled, the full path of currently opened folder or archive is displayed in WinRAR title bar. 9. New "File types to open as archives first" option in "Settings/Compression". Here you can define how Enter or double click on a file with non-archive extension and archive contents should be processed in WinRAR file list in file management mode. Examples of such files are .docx or self-extracting .exe archives. You can instruct WinRAR either to open such files as archives first or to execute or open them in associated programs. Default settings are to open self-extracting exe and to run other types of archives with non-archive extension. Regardless of these options, you can always open any such archive file by pressing Ctrl+PgDn on its name in WinRAR file list. Default folders for archives and extracted files are moved from "Settings/Compression" to "Settings/Paths". 10. New "Copy full names to clipboard" command in "File" menu places full names of selected files to clipboard. 11. Changes in the context menu displayed when right clicking the file list in WinRAR: a) several commands, which are also present on the toolbar or in main menu, such as "View" and "Repair", are removed from this context menu; b) "Copy full names to clipboard" command is added; c) "Run" for executables, "Open in associated application" for associated files and "Show archive contents" for archives are added. They allow to choose a way to process SFX archives and archive files with non-archive extensions. These items are present only in the file management mode and are not available inside of archives. 12. LZ and ZIPX are added to list of associations in Settings/Integration dialog. 13. LZ and ZIPX extensions are added to default list of formats for -ms switch ("Specify file types to store") invoked without parameters. 14. You can specify 'f' charset value in -sc switch to use UTF-8 encoding. For example: rar a -scfl arcname @filelist.txt to read contents of filelist.txt as UTF-8 text. 15. RAR "lt" and "vt" commands display file times with nanosecond precision. Such precision is used in RAR5 archives created by RAR/Unix 5.50 and newer. Archives created by WinRAR have 100ns file time precision. 16. Only '+', '-' and '1' precision modifiers are supported in -ts switch now. Use '+' to store the file time with maximum precision, '-' to omit the file time and '1' to store it with 1 second precision. Intermediate precision modes previously defined with '2' and '3' modifiers are not available in RAR 5.0 archive format and ignored by -ts switch. 17. If a wrong password is entered when unpacking an encrypted file in RAR5 archive, WinRAR proposes to enter a valid password for same file again instead of aborting extraction. 18. File path information is displayed if mouse pointer is placed over a name of archiving file in the operation progress window. 19. Name of currently active compression profile is displayed in the archiving dialog above "Profiles..." button. 20. If "Find" command is invoked from inside of archive subfolder, "File names to find" will include the path to this subfolder. So "Find" will search only starting from this subfolder. 21. Bugs fixed: a) fixed crashes and security vulnerability when unpacking corrupt RAR archives; b) WinRAR failed to unpack files in ZIP archives compressed with XZ algorithm and encrypted with AES; c) if "Windows progress bars" option in WinRAR settings was turned off and "Put each file to separate archive" archiving mode was used, "gold" part of total progress bar did not display the compressed data ratio correctly; d) SFX archive extraction progress was incorrect in case of multivolume SFX archive with total volume size exceeding 4 GB; e) if archived folder name included trailing spaces, if user selected and extracted some folders in non-root archive folder and if "Allow potentially incompatible names" extraction option was turned off, WinRAR could lose one or more leading characters in extracted folder name; f) if only creation or only last access file time was stored in RAR5 archive with 1 second precision, such as with -ma5 -tsm- -tsa1 switches, this stored time was ignored when extracting. Version 5.40 1. "Name encoding" submenu in "Options" menu allows to select encoding for archived file names. This selection affects archive browsing and extraction commands. You can use Ctrl+E keyboard shortcut to access this menu quickly. It can be useful when unpacking an archive without Unicode file names. For example, unpacking a zip file with Chinese archived names in Windows with Russian specified as a language for non-Unicode programs. 2. If RAR recovery volumes (.rev files) are present in the same folder as usual RAR volumes, archive test command verifies .rev contents after completing testing .rar files. If you wish to test only .rev files without checking .rar volumes, you can select .rev files in WinRAR file list and apply "Test" only to them or run: rar t arcname.part1.rev in the command line. 3. While NTFS file system permits file names with trailing spaces and dots, a lot of Windows programs fail to process such names correctly. If "Allow potentially incompatible names" option in "Advanced" page of extraction dialog is turned off, WinRAR removes trailing spaces and dots, if any, from file names when extracting. This option is turned off by default. Command line RAR also removes trailing spaces and dots when extracting unless -oni switch is specified. 4. Previously "Synchronize archive contents" update mode (-as command line switch) aborted if some of archiving folders could not be read. Now WinRAR continues performing the operation and preserves archived files matching unreadable folders. 5. WinRAR Shift+Del delete command can be used to delete folders containing non-standard file names with trailing spaces and dots. Usual delete to Recycle Bin also as Shift+Del in previous WinRAR versions cannot delete such folders. Unlike Del command, Shift+Del removes files permanently, they are not moved to Recycle Bin. No additional prompts are issued for files with read-only and system attributes. 6. You can drag folders from folder tree panel and drop them to other programs or Desktop to copy or unpack them. Drag the archive icon in tree panel root to unpack the entire archive. 7. "New folder" button in extraction dialog proposes a new folder name based on archive name instead of generic "New Folder". 8. Command line RAR version information: a) if -iver switch is specified, RAR displays the version number and quits. You can run just "RAR -iver"; b) "x86" or "x64" is displayed in Windows RAR version information both for -iver and in the copyright title for other commands. 9. If -p switch is used without optional <pwd> parameter, a password can be also set with file redirection or pipe. For example: rar -p myarc.rar myfiles < psw.txt 10. Command line RAR treats 'arcname.partN' as 'arcname.partN.rar' if 'arcname.partN' does not exist and 'arcname.part#.rar' exists. For example, it is allowed to run: RAR x arcname.part01 to start extraction from arcname.part01.rar 11. Improvements in 7z archives support: a) "Solid" status is correctly detected and reported for 7z archives in WinRAR "Info" command; b) dictionary size is displayed for LZMA and LZMA2 7z archives in WinRAR "Info" command; c) unknown packed size for files inside of 7z solid block is denoted as '?' instead of '0' when browsing the archive contents in WinRAR. 12. Maximum comment length for RAR archives is increased from 64 to 256 KB. Since SFX script commands are stored in archive comment, it allows a longer main and license text in SFX archives. 13. Size of default WinRAR viewer font is scaled up properly in Windows high DPI mode. 14. Switch -scul can be used to process big endian UTF-16 list files as well, provided that they have a correct byte order mark. Previously it allowed only little endian file lists. 15. Minimum supported Windows version is Windows XP SP3 now. WinRAR will not run in Windows XP without service packs. 16. "Settings/File list/Allow all uppercase names" option is removed. This option was intended to simplify transition from MS DOS to Windows and is not needed anymore. 17. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR 5.31 x64 "Compress and email" command did not work with Microsoft Outlook x64; b) if WinRAR 5.31 version for one of right to left languages was installed in Windows with English or other not right to left system language, WinRAR could change Windows Explorer layout to right to left; c) if archive was stored in a folder without "Write" permission and if archive contents was extracted with drag and drop to a writable folder, WinRAR issued an unnecessary privileges elevation prompt. Version 5.31 1. Following issues are corrected in Windows high DPI mode: a) if text size in Windows settings was set to 150% or larger, the font size in WinRAR help was not increased accordingly, resulting in too small text; b) default columns width in WinRAR file list was less than expected for 125% or larger Windows text setting. 2. Interface improvements for right to left languages: a) proper text alignment in simple WinRAR prompts, such as confirmations to delete archived files or to clear the log file; b) "OK", "Cancel", "Help" buttons in multi-page dialogs, such as archiving and extraction options or WinRAR settings, are aligned correctly and translated to default Windows display language. 3. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR SFX module could load DLL libraries from its own executable folder as a result of calling some Windows API functions. It could lead to security threat if DLL files with malicious code were stored in the same folder as SFX archive. Now SFX module takes additional steps to prevent such situation in Windows Vista and newer. Be aware that users without latest Windows security patches installed also as Windows XP users still can be affected, so they must be especially careful to run SFX archive from a folder without suspicious DLL files; b) WinRAR 5.30 failed to run .lnk files from file list. Version 5.30 1. Information about the critical vulnerability in WinRAR self-extracting archives published in news in September and October 2015 is incorrect. Unfortunately mass media failed to recognize that what was described as WinRAR vulnerability is Windows OLE vulnerability patched in November 2014: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms14-064.aspx Even if unpatched, this Windows OLE vulnerability does not introduce new risk factors for WinRAR SFX archives. Please read http://rarlab.com/vuln_sfx_html2.htm for more details. No patches for WinRAR are needed. 2. Added extraction of multipart ZIP archives created by 7-Zip. Such archives have .zip.001, .zip.002, ... file extensions. You need to open .zip.001 file in WinRAR shell to browse or unpack such archive. All parts must be stored in the same folder before starting extraction. 3. Added extraction of files split to multiple parts with .001, .002, ..., extensions. You can open .001 file as a usual archive and then unpack its contents. WinRAR will combine all parts and save them to extracted file. All parts must be stored in the same folder before starting extraction. "001" item is included to "Associate WinRAR with" list in "Settings/Integration" dialog. 4. WinRAR file list allows to use mouse Back and Forward buttons or Alt+Left and Alt+Right keyboard shortcuts to navigate in recently visited folders. 5. Folder wildcards are allowed in RAR command line in file names to archive. For example: rar a backup c:\backup\2015*\* will archive all '2015*' folders in c:\backup. Use -r switch to search for '2015*' also in c:\backup subfolders. 6. "Extract" button in SFX archive is changed to "Pause" when extraction is started, so it is possible to pause SFX extraction and resume it later. 7. "Skip encrypted" option in "Find files" dialog to silently skip encrypted archives while performing search command. 8. Archive test command works for tar.gz, tar.bz2 and tar.xz archives. Since TAR format does not provide file data checksums, WinRAR checks only validity of GZIP, BZIP2 or XZ container. 9. Adding a new string to WinRAR diagnostic messages window could be slow and affect the operation performance in case of thousands of errors. Now it works fast regardless of errors number. 10. New 'R' object for -sc switch defines encoding of console RAR messages sent to redirected files and pipes. For example: rar lb -scur data > list.txt will produce Unicode list.txt with archived file names. 11. Sleep time parameter in -ri<priority>[:<sleep_time>] switch is adjusted to lower its impact to RAR performance and especially to recovery record related operations. Higher sleep time values are needed to reduce the system load to same level as in previous versions. 12. Console RAR "l" and "v" commands display file time in YYYY-MM-DD format. 13. When extracting RAR and ZIP archives created in Unix, WinRAR maps decomposed Unicode characters to precomposed. Such conversion is required for some Unix and OS X archives to correctly unpack non-English archived names in Windows. It works for Windows versions starting from Windows Vista. 14. Modification time is set for all folders created when unpacking .7z archives. Previous versions set it only for non-empty folders. 15. WinRAR prevents a computer to go to sleep by inactivity timeout until current operation, such as archiving, extraction or another archive processing, is done. 16. Total progress bar is displayed when extracting .arj, .lzh and .cab archives (except multivolume archives). 17. Progress bar is displayed when deleting files after archiving and when clearing "Archive" attribute of archived files. 18. "Test" command also verifies contents of NTFS alternate data streams in RAR 3.x - 5.x archives. Previously their contents was checked only during extraction command. 19. SFX module sets sfxstime environment variable, which contains the module start time in "YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS-ms" format. You can specify it in Path command if you need to generate a time based unique installation path, such as "Path=myapp-%sfxstime%". 20. Bugs fixed: a) console RAR crashed instead of displaying an overwrite prompt when attempting to add files to already existing volumes; b) console RAR "lt" command did not display seconds in file timestamp; c) WinRAR failed to decompress .xxe files if they did not include "section N of xxencode" string in the body; d) WinRAR could not restore contents of NTFS alternate data stream saved with -os switch if it was split between different volumes. Version 5.21 1. "Drag and drop context menu" options in "Settings/Integration/ Context menu items" dialog allow to disable WinRAR archiving and extraction commands in context menu displayed after dragging and dropping files with right mouse button. 2. If winrar.ini file is present in the same folder as WinRAR installer, winrar.ini will be copied to WinRAR program folder after completing installation. 3. While previous versions could produce RAR5 volumes of slightly smaller than requested size sometimes, such situation is less likely now. In most cases volume size equals to specified by user. 4. Now by default WinRAR skips symbolic links with absolute paths in link target when extracting. You can enable creating such links with "Allow absolute paths in symbolic links" option on "Advanced" page of extraction dialog or with -ola command line switch. Such links pointing to folders outside of extraction destination folder can present a security risk. Enable their extraction only if you are sure that archive contents is safe, such as your own backup. 5. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR 5.20 issued unnecessary user account control (UAC) prompt, when running an executable from archive stored in UAC protected folder. Since nothing is extracted to folder containing an archive in such case, UAC prompt is not needed; b) WinRAR could overwrite files with read-only attribute only when unpacking RAR and ZIP archive formats. Now it is also implemented for other archive formats supported by WinRAR; c) "Elapsed time" and "Time left" were displayed incorrectly when applying "Convert" command to multiple archives and enabling "Add recovery record" option. Version 5.20 1. If Windows User Account Control prevents extracting or archiving commands to create files in system protected folders, WinRAR attempts to start its another copy with administrator privileges to complete the operation. It is necessary to confirm privileges elevation in response to User Account Control prompt to allow such second WinRAR copy to run. 2. You can drag files in Explorer with right mouse button, drop them to some folder and select WinRAR archiving commands in context menu to create an archive with these files in the destination folder. 3. It is possible to use WinRAR.ini file instead of Registry to store WinRAR settings. You may prefer such approach if you plan to install WinRAR to removable media, such as USB flash drive, and then run it on different computers. See "WinRAR.ini file" topic in "Configuration settings" chapter of WinRAR help for details. 4. Added extraction support for ZIP and ZIPX archives using XZ compression algorithm. 5. If ZIP or ZIPX archive contains any compression algorithms except usual "Store" or "Deflate", algorithm names are displayed in "Version to extract" field of archive information dialog. Algorithms with names unknown to WinRAR will be assigned "m<num>" name, where "num" is a compression algorithm numeric identifier. 6. "Open with WinRAR" command is available in Windows context menus for archive formats supported by WinRAR. It can be turned off with "Open with WinRAR (for usual archives)" option in WinRAR "Settings/Integration/Context menu items..." dialog. 7. Command line RAR can read the default set of switches from rar.ini file stored in RAR program folder. Previously it was possible to define only the same set of switches for all RAR command with "switches=<switches>" string. Now rar.ini also allows to specify separate switch sets for individual RAR commands using the following syntax: switches_<command>=<any RAR switches, separated by spaces> For example: switches_a=-m5 -s switches_x=-o+ 8. Command "ch" supports switches -tl, -cu, -cl also for ZIP archives. Previously "ch" allowed these switches only for RAR archive format. 9. For archive formats lacking file time information, such as .bz2, .xz and .Z, WinRAR sets container archive modification time to extracted files. It does not apply to tar.bz2, tar.xz and tar.Z, which use file time stored in tar headers. 10. "Keep broken files" extraction option is supported for bzip2 archives. 11. WinRAR icon in Windows context menus is scaled up correctly in high DPI screen modes such as 150% or 200% of normal text size. 12. It is possible to disable WinRAR "Benchmark" command with "Benchmark" variable of HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Policy Registry key. In multi-user environment "Benchmark" command might abuse shared computational resources. See "Registry variables" topic in "Configuration settings" chapter of WinRAR help for more details. 13. Additionally to "sfxcmd" variable containing the entire command line, SFX module sets "sfxpar" variable containing command line parameters only, without leading SFX module name. These variables are set before starting a program specified in "Setup" command. 14. File overwrite prompt in console RAR displays the size and modification time for existing and new files. 15. When archiving from stdin with -si switch, RAR sets the current system time to modification time of archived file. Previous version did not set this time at all. 16. It is possible to use -si and -v<size> switches together. Previous versions did not allow to create volumes when archiving from stdin. 17. Warning is issued when starting unpacking 4 GB or larger file from RAR or ZIP archive to FAT32 patition, so user may cancel the operation. FAT32 does not support files of such size. Also this warning is issued when starting to create RAR archive with "Store" (-m0) method if estimated archive size is 4 GB or more. 18. "Select all" button in "Settings/Integration" dialog is renamed to "Toggle all". Now it deselects archive formats if all they are already selected. 19. "Delete archive" extraction option correctly removes all .zip and .7z volumes. Previously it removed only the first volume in the set for these archive formats. Version 5.11 1. WinRAR can unpack TAR archives containing folders with pax extended headers. Previous versions failed to unpack them. 2. "Keep broken files" extraction option is supported for 7-Zip archives. 3. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR 5.10 did not set "hidden", "read-only" and "system" file attributes when unpacking ZIP archives; b) WinRAR 5.10 failed to update self-extracting RAR archives containing nested ZIP archives stored without compression; c) ZIP archive created with "Do not store paths" option included unnecessary empty name records for folders; d) archived files could have 1 hour modification time error in Windows XP; e) deleting a file in RAR5 solid archive containing files stored with -ver switch caused such files to lose version information; f) black rectangles were displayed instead of toolbar buttons in 16- and 24- bit screen color modes and Windows custom text size larger than 100%. Version 5.10 1. Added extraction support for ZIP and ZIPX archives using BZIP2, LZMA and PPMd compression. 2. Added extraction support for 7z split archives (.7z.001, .7z.002, ...). 3. Added support for AES-NI CPU instructions allowing to improve RAR encryption and decryption performance. 4. Default theme images are scaled up with better quality in high DPI display mode. 5. Environment variables, such as %temp%, can be used in "Files to add" field of archiving dialog. 6. Switch -ai can be used when creating RAR archive, so predefined values, typical for file and folder, are stored instead of actual attributes. Previously this switch could be used only when extracting. Version 5.01 1. RAR 5.0 archives can include an optional quick open information controlled with -qo[-|+] switch or "Quick open information" options group in archiving dialog. It allows to open the archive contents in WinRAR faster. This version provides better update performance for archives containing both quick open information and service records, such as NTFS file security. Also default parameters of quick open information are optimized to achieve faster open time for such archives. 2. Bugs fixed: a) "Find" command could fail when searching text string in .7z archives; b) when opening RAR 5.0 archive with encrypted file names stored in another such archive, WinRAR could issue an erroneous message that password is incorrect. It happened only if passwords to inner and outer archives were different. It did not affect extraction, all files could be unpacked regardless of this message; c) option "Use for all archives" in password dialog did not suppress additional password requests for RAR 5.0 archives with encrypted file names; d) WinRAR address bar did not process correctly environment variable based paths, such as %temp%; e) storing NTFS file security and alternate data streams did not work for file pathnames longer than 260 characters; f) "Test" command could erroneously report damaged data in valid recovery record if only a part of files in RAR 5.0 archive was tested. It did not happen if entire archive contents was tested; g) "Test" command erroneously reported errors when verifying RAR 4.x Unix symbolic links; h) WinRAR "View" command did not work for files inside of BZIP2 archives; i) if "High precision modification time" option in archiving dialog was turned off, WinRAR did not store the modification time at all instead of storing a lower precision time; j) destination paths containing .\ or ..\ component did not work when extracting non-RAR archives in WinRAR command line mode; k) WinRAR failed to unpack multivolume CAB archives. Version 5.00 1. New RAR 5.0 archiving format. You can use "RAR 5.0" option in archiving dialog or -ma command line switch to create RAR 5.0 archives. Older software including older WinRAR versions is not able to decompress RAR 5.0 archives, so if you plan to send an archive to other people, it is necessary to take the compatibility issue into consideration. You can select "RAR" instead of "RAR5" option in archiving dialog to create RAR 4.x archives compatible with previous WinRAR versions. 2. Changes in RAR 5.0 compression algorithm: a) maximum compression dictionary size is increased up to 1 GB in 64 bit WinRAR. 32 bit WinRAR version can use up to 256 MB dictionary when creating an archive. Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions can unpack archives with any dictionary size, including 1 GB; b) default dictionary size for RAR 5.0 is 32 MB, typically resulting in higher compression ratio and lower speed than RAR 4.x 4 MB. You can use "Dictionary size" archiving dialog option or -md<size> switch to change this value; c) -md<size> switch syntax is modified to support larger dictionary sizes. Append 'k', 'm' and 'g' modifiers to specify the size in kilo-, mega- and gigabytes, like -md64m for 64 MB dictionary. If modifiers are not present, megabytes are assumed, so -md64m is equal to -md64; d) RAR 5.0 format includes Intel IA-32 executable and delta compression algorithms, but RAR 4.x text, audio, true color and Itanium algorithms are not supported. These excluded algorithms are not efficient for modern data types and hardware configurations; e) RAR 5.0 decompression can utilize several CPU cores. Though not to same extent as in compression algorithm, it improves the decompression speed on large files with poorly compressible data or when using BLAKE2 checksums. 3. Changes in RAR 5.0 archive format: a) file times are stored as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) instead of former local time, making file exchange among several time zones more straightforward; b) file names and archive comments use UTF-8 encoding. 4. RAR 5.0 recovery record is based on Reed-Solomon error correction codes. If recovery record size is large enough, 5% and more, the new error correction scheme provides much higher resistance to multiple damages comparing to RAR 4.x recovery record. Smaller record, such as 1 - 2%, or less random damage type would result in less difference between 4.x and 5.0. For single continuous damage 4.x and 5.0 efficiency is about the same. Additionally to usual data erasures, the new recovery record is able to detect deletions and insertions of much larger size than in previous RAR versions. Maximum insertion size is several megabytes. Maximum deletion size depends on the damage type and in some cases can be as large as the recovery record size. Still, the best recovery performance and efficiency is achieved if no deletions and insertions are present, so all data including damaged sectors preserve their original positions. Thus, if you use some special software to copy an archive from damaged media, it is better to choose the mode, when damaged sectors are filled by zeroes or any other data instead of cutting them out completely from resulting file. RAR 5.0 recovery record is more resistant to damage of recovery record itself and can utilize a partially corrupt recovery record data. Note, though, that "Repair" command does not fix broken blocks in recovery record. Only file data are corrected. After successful archive repair, you may need to create a new recovery record for saved files. New recovery record is not based on 512 byte sectors anymore and incorporates more complicated data structures. So it is impossible to specify its size in sectors. For RAR 5.0 archives the parameter of -rr[N] switch and rr[N] command is always treated as a percent of archive size regardless of presence of % character. Typically N% recovery record can repair up to N% of continuously damaged data and increases the archive size by only slightly more than N%. Ability to fix multiple damages is proportional to N. We used "Screaming Fast Galois Field Arithmetic Using Intel SIMD Instructions" paper by James S. Plank, Kevin M. Greenan and Ethan L. Miller to improve Reed-Solomon coding performance. Also we are grateful to Artem Drobanov and Bulat Ziganshin for samples and ideas allowed to make Reed-Solomon coding more efficient. 5. "Test" command verifies validity of RAR 5.0 recovery record. Recovery record is tested after processing all archived files. If corrupt archive contains the recovery record, it might be possible to repair it even if recovery record validity test is failed. "Repair" command attempts to utilize even a partially damaged recovery record. So treat the negative recovery record test result as a reason to re-create the archive if original files are still available, but not as a reason to avoid "Repair" command. 6. Changes in RAR 5.0 encryption algorithm: a) encryption algorithm is changed from AES-128 to AES-256 in CBC mode. Key derivation function is based on PBKDF2 using HMAC-SHA256; b) special password verification value allows to detect most of wrong passwords without necessity to unpack the entire file; c) if archive headers are not encrypted ("Encrypt file names" option is off), file checksums for encrypted RAR 5.0 files are modified using a special password dependent algorithm, to make impossible guessing file contents based on checksums. Do not expect such encrypted file checksums to match usual CRC32 and BLAKE2 values. 7. RAR 5.0 archives allow to utilize 256 bit length BLAKE2sp hash ( https://blake2.net ) instead of 32 bit CRC32 as a file checksum. Enable "Use BLAKE2 file checksum" option in "Options" page of archiving dialog or specify -htb command line switch to use BLAKE2 checksums. While producing slightly larger archives, BLAKE2 can be used for file contents identification. If two files have the same BLAKE2 value, it practically guarantees that file contents is the same. BLAKE2 error detection property is also stronger than in much shorter CRC32. 8. Features removed: a) authenticity verification feature did not provide the required level of reliability and was removed; b) switch -en (do not add "end of archive" block) is not supported by RAR 5.0 archives, which always have the end of archive block. This block helps WinRAR to safely skip external data like digital signatures appended to archive; c) old style extension based arcname.rNN volume names are not supported by RAR 5.0 archives, which use only arcname.partN.rar volume names; d) file comments are not supported anymore both in RAR 4.x and RAR 5.0 archives. Console RAR 'cf' command is removed. It does not affect the archive comment support, which is present in both versions of archive format and is not planned for removal. 9. "Set password" command and "Dictionary size" option are moved to "General" page of archiving dialog. 10. You can use "Save symbolic links as links" option on "Advanced" page of archiving dialog to save and restore NTFS symbolic links and reparse points as links, so their contents is not archived. Command line equivalent of this option is -ol switch. Similar option for NTFS hard links is "Save hard links as links". Its command line equivalent is -oh switch. Both options are available only for RAR 5.0 archive format. 11. Added extraction only support for XZ archive format. 12. Changes in recovery volume processing in RAR 5.0 archive format: a) maximum number of RAR+REV volumes in RAR 5.0 format is 65535 instead of 255; b) recovery volume operations are faster than in RAR 4.x; c) additionally to recovery data, RAR 5.0 REV files also store service information such as checksums of protected RAR files. So they are slightly larger than RAR volumes which they protect. If you plan to copy individual RAR and REV files to some removable media, you need to take it into account and specify RAR volume size by a few kilobytes smaller than media size. 13. Maximum path length for files in RAR and ZIP archives is increased up to 2048 characters. 14. Command line RAR returns the exit code 11 if it can detect that user entered a wrong password. This code can be returned only for RAR 5.0 archives. It is impossible to distinguish a wrong password and data damage for RAR 4.x archives. 15. 'v' and 'l' commands display archived file names in the end of line, not in that beginning as before. Also some fields previously available in 'l' and 'v' output are now shown only by 'lt' and 'vt'. 'vt' and 'lt' commands provide the detailed multiline information for every archived file. 'vta' and 'lta' also include service headers into list. 16. Now the default charset for filelists in commands like 'rar a arcname @filelist' is ANSI for both WinRAR and console RAR. In previous versions it was ANSI for WinRAR and OEM for console RAR. You can use -sc<charset>l switch to override this default. 17. Internal WinRAR viewer can detect and display files in UTF-8 and UTF-16 little endian encodings. 18. UTF-16 little endian encoding is used in RAR and WinRAR log file rar.log, so Unicode file names are stored in the log correctly. WinRAR automatically truncates the old rar.log file in non-Unicode format to avoid mixing different encoding in the same log file. In case of console RAR you need to delete the old rar.log manually, otherwide RAR will append UTF-16 messages to existing rar.log. You can use -sc<charset>g switch to change the default log file encoding, such as -scag for ANSI encoding. 19. Command line 'r' (repair) command can include an optional destpath\ parameter defining the destination folder for repaired archive: rar r archive.rar destpath\ Version 4.20 1. Changes in RAR compression: a) RAR general compression algorithm is optimized for better utilization of several processor cores. While some speed gain is possible even in single processor mode, best results are achieved in multi-core environment. Speed gain depends on data type and average file size. Several cores are utilized more efficiently when compressing large files. b) we had to increase memory requirements to achieve higher compression speed. General RAR compression algorithm allocates about 120 MB comparing to 40 MB in WinRAR 4.11; c) RAR text compression algorithm cannot utilize several CPU cores efficiently, so its performance in multiprocessor environment is much lower than for general algorithm. Also its decompression speed is much lower than in general algorithm regardless of CPU number. So we decided to disable the text algorithm by default. If you need maximum possible compression ratio for plain text data regardless of speed, you can enable the text compression in "Advanced compression parameter" dialog. Press "Compression..." button on "Advanced" page of archiving dialog to access it. You can also change this option permanently in default compression profile; In the command line mode the text compression can be enabled with -mct switch; d) "Fastest" (-m1) compression mode also supports several processor cores now. In 4.11 it could use only a single processor core. 2. RAR general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved, though not to same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance does not depend on a number of cores. 3. Changes in ZIP compression: a) now ZIP compression supports several processor cores resulting in noticeably higher performance in multi-core environment. Single CPU ZIP compression is also faster than in 4.11; b) memory use for ZIP compression is increased to about 15 MB. 4. Recovery volume creating and processing can use several CPU cores resulting in higher speed. Though, typically hard drive seek speed is a limiting factor for recovery volumes, so this gain is most noticeable when working with solid state drive. 5. Now the allowed <threads> value for -mt<threads> switch is 1 - 32, not 0 - 16 as before. 6. "Find files" command can search data in 7-Zip archives. Previously "Find files" did not support .7z archive format. 7. Windows 2000 is not supported by WinRAR and WinRAR self-extracting modules anymore. 8. "Save current settings" button in "Advanced SFX options" dialog is now available only when converting an existing archive to SFX. Options saved with this button are applied only to convert to SFX operation. If you create or update SFX archive, only SFX options stored in default compression profile are used. Options saved in "Advanced SFX options" dialog are ignored for these operations. Version 4.11 1. Bugs fixed: a) WinRAR did not store NTFS "Compressed" attribute, when creating RAR archives; b) WinRAR crashed in command line mode if @filelist parameter was present and 'filelist' did not exist. This bug affected only WinRAR.exe, not RAR.exe; c) if -x*\somefolder\* exclusion mask was specified when archiving and if name of current folder contained 'somefolder', WinRAR excluded all files and stopped creating an archive; d) GUI self-extracting archives did not work in Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). Version 4.10 1. WinRAR can create ZIP archives of practically any size. 2 GB archive size and 65535 file number ZIP limitations of previous WinRAR versions are not valid anymore. 2. WinRAR can create multivolume ZIP archives, which are also known as split ZIP files. ZIP volumes have names like 'volname.zip', 'volname.z01', 'volname.z02'. Use a volume with ".zip" file extension in all archive processing operations like starting extraction or opening an archive. Unlike RAR volumes, ZIP volumes cannot be self-extracting. WinRAR needs to have access to all ZIP volumes of multivolume file set at the same time, when creating or unpacking them. So it is impossible to create or unpack ZIP volumes on removable disks, one volume per disk. You need to create them all in the same folder. 3. Added the high precision file time support in ZIP archives. WinRAR can store and extract modification, creation and last access file time in ZIP archives with 100 nanosecond precision. You need to set "High precision modification time" option in "Time" part of archiving dialog to store all 3 times in archive. Set appropriate "File time" options in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog to choose times to extract. 4. Added support for Unicode names stored in ZIP extra field data. Different ZIP tools store Unicode names either in file header or in ZIP extra field and now WinRAR can correctly process both types of Unicode names. 5. "Synchronize archive contents" option and -as command line switch are supported in ZIP format. 6. Modifications of switch -ag behavior: a) -ag can be used with all RAR and WinRAR commands, not just with archiving only; b) 'N' format character behavior differs in archiving and non-archiving operations. When archiving, it is incremented until the first unused name is found. In non-archiving operations like extracting it selects the existing archive preceding the first unused name; c) 'I' format character allows to specify minutes regardless of presence and position of 'H' (hours) in format string. It can be used instead of 'M' (minutes), when you wish to place minutes before hours or do not need hours at all. 7. By default, WinRAR proposes to update an archive if viewer modified an opened file or created any new files. New "Ignore modifications for" option in "Settings/Viewer" dialog allows to disable such behavior. You can enter one or several file masks separated by spaces here and WinRAR will not prompt to update an archive if file created or modified by viewer matches one of these masks. 8. Changes in volume size input field. Now you can select size units in the drop down list to the right of volume size. Previous way to define size modifiers, by entering 'k', 'm', etc. character after the numeric size value, is also supported. 9. Changes in "Predefined sizes" in "Define volume sizes" dialog. Floppies and ZIP disks are replaced by 5 MB and 100 MB volumes, added new entries for maximum FAT32 file size and for Blu-ray disks. 10. New "Wipe files if password is set" option in "Options" page of archiving dialog. If you prefer to always delete encrypted files securely, you can enable "Wipe files if password is set" in the default compression profile. 11. New "Wipe temporary files/Encrypted only" option in "Settings/Security". It allows to use a slower and more secure delete for temporary files extracted from archives identified by WinRAR as encrypted. Quick delete is used for all other temporary files. 12. Changes in "Convert archives" command: a) now it is possible to convert encrypted archives. Previously "Convert archives" command skipped them. Though, if you still prefer to skip them, you can do it by enabling "Skip encrypted archives" option in "Convert archives" dialog. It might be useful if you wish to run the conversion command in unattended mode, avoiding password prompts; b) special "rar2" archive type, which was specific for RAR 1.x and 2.x archives, is removed. Now "rar" archive type controls conversion of all versions of RAR archives. Since the convert command does not need to detect RAR archive version anymore, the initial search for archives is performed faster, resulting in shorter delay before displaying "Convert archives" dialog. 13. New -log[fmt][=name] switch allows to write archive and file names to log file in archiving command for RAR and ZIP formats and also in extracting, deleting and listing commands for RAR format. This switch is especially useful, when you need to further process an archive created with -ag or -v switches, because -log provides the archive name generated by WinRAR. 14. New -@[+] switch allows to process all parameters starting from '@' character either as file names (-@) or as file lists (-@+). 15. "Setup program" SFX options are moved from "General" to "Setup" page of "Advanced SFX options" dialog. Both "Run after extraction" and "Run before extraction" are now multiline, so it is possible to specify several setup programs for same SFX archive. 16. "SetupCode" SFX script command instructs SFX archive to wait for termination of setup program and return the exit code of setup program increased by 1000 as the exit code of SFX executable. GUI equivalent of this command is "Wait and return exit code" option on "Setup" page of "Advanced SFX options" dialog. 17. SFX does not support "S" (create in the top level of Start Menu) "Shortcut" command mode anymore. Recent Windows versions do not allow programs to add items to the top of Start Menu. 18. Volume size in archiving and wizard dialogs can be specified as a decimal fraction. Decimal mark is defined by Windows regional settings. -v<size> command line switch also allows decimal fractions. In command line mode the dot (.) is always used as the decimal mark. For example, -v1.5g switch means 1.5 gigabytes. Version 4.01 1. Added support for file sizes stored in binary format in TAR archives. Some TAR archives use the binary size format instead of octal for files larger than 8 GB. 2. Bugs fixed: a) "Repair" command failed to properly reconstruct structure of RAR archives, which contained at least one file with packed size exceeding 4 GB. This bug did not affect the recovery record based repair. It happened only if recovery record was not found and WinRAR performed reconstruction of archive structure; b) even if "Do not extract paths" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog was set as the default, WinRAR still unpacked file paths if called from Explorer context menu; c) after entering a wrong password for encrypted ZIP archive, sometimes WinRAR ignored subsequent attempts to enter a valid password; d) "Wizard" command did not allow to create self-extracting and multivolume archives, when compressing a single folder or a file without extension; e) "Import settings from file" command did not restore multiline comments in WinRAR compression profiles; f) when converting RAR volumes having name1.name2.part#.rar name format, "Convert archives" command erroneously removed ".name2" name part. So resulting archive had name1.rar file name instead of expected name1.name2.rar; g) RAR could crash when creating a new archive with -agNNN switch if archive number in generated name was 110 or larger; h) WinRAR failed to display non-English file names in 7-Zip archives properly if they used a non-default code page. It was the display only problem, such names were unpacked correctly. Version 4.00 1. RAR decompression speed is improved. Depending on data type, decompression can be up to 30% faster than in previous versions. Both the general RAR algorithm and most of special RAR multimedia methods benefit from this improvement. The only module of RAR algorithm, which is not affected, is "Text compression" method. 2. Changes in ISO support: a) UDF support is upgraded to UDF 2.50 revision. It makes possible to unpack most of Blu-ray ISO files; b) when browsing UDF ISO file, UDF revision number is displayed after the "UDF" format name in WinRAR address bar and in archive information dialog; c) WinRAR sets the folder modification date when unpacking folders stored in UDF and ISO9660 files. 3. Changes in password dialog: a) WinRAR uses the same format of password dialog both when archiving and extracting, so "Show password" option is available also when extracting; b) "Organize passwords..." button in password dialog provides access to password organizer interface, where you can specify your frequently used passwords. You will be able to access these saved passwords using the drop down list or autocomplete feature in password dialog. It is important to know that saved passwords are not encrypted and anybody having access to your computer can view them. Use "Organize passwords" feature only if your computer is protected from unauthorized access; c) "Use for all archives" option is available in password dialog when unpacking several archives at once. You can utilize it to apply an entered password to all archives. If you use this option with an empty password, WinRAR will skip all encrypted archives; d) Unlike previous versions, the password from default compression profile is not used for extraction. If you wish to use the same password for all extracting archives, press "Organize passwords..." button in the password dialog and define a new password entry, specifying "*" file mask in "Select for archives" field. 4. In Windows 7 WinRAR will display the total operation progress also on WinRAR icon on Windows taskbar. You can disable it using "Taskbar progress bar" option on "General" page of WinRAR settings. 5. Numerous Unicode support improvements allow to process non-English file names more smoothly. These improvements include: a) better Unicode handling in WinRAR in "Rename", "Convert", "Find" and other commands, in folder tree panel, in password request dialog and in many other parts of WinRAR interface; b) correctly displayed Unicode names in WinRAR items in Explorer context menus; c) Unicode support in .lng files, making WinRAR localization possible for Unicode only languages. 6. Changes in -x<file> switch syntax. Now you can specify a wildcard exclusion mask for folders. Such mask must have the trailing '\' character, like -x*tmp*\ or -x*\temp\ 7. New "Extract relative paths" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog. If you browse some archive subfolder in WinRAR shell and enable "Extract relative paths" option, the path part up to and including the current subfolder will be removed from extracted file paths. For example, if you are inside of "Backup\MyData" archive folder and extract "Images" folder, it will be extracted as "Images", not as "Backup\MyData\Images". This option is the new default extraction mode, but you can change the default back to WinRAR 3.x style. Just select "Extract full paths" and then press "Save settings" in "General" part of extraction dialog. 8. Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows NT are not supported by WinRAR and WinRAR self-extracting modules anymore. Minimum Windows version required for WinRAR 4.0 is Windows 2000. If you need to run WinRAR on older Windows, you can download previous WinRAR versions from ftp://ftp.rarlab.com/rar 9. If TAR, TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 archive contains symbolic or hard links and if destination file system is NTFS, WinRAR will create these links when unpacking such archive. WinRAR will create symbolic links as symbolic and hard links as hard in Windows Vista and newer and it will create all links as hard in older Windows. If destination file system is FAT32 or any other not supporting file links, WinRAR will skip links when unpacking TAR, TAR.GZ and TAR.BZ2 archives. 10. Recovery volume processing involves less disk seek operations resulting in higher performance. 11. You can select Windows 7 library in tree panel in extraction dialog and WinRAR will use its default save location as the destination path. 12. "Report" command allows to select HTML, Unicode text and usual text as output format for report file. Unlike previous WinRAR versions, now WinRAR preservers Unicode characters in reports when using HTML or Unicode text format. So non-English characters in file names will be displayed properly in such reports. 13. Message list in GUI SFX archives displays only operation status and error messages. It does not contain names of all extracted files anymore. This change improves the speed and reduces memory requirements for SFX archives containing a large number of files. Also it makes easier to locate error messages, because they are not hidden among extracted file names. 14. GUI SFX archives display "Extract" button instead of "Install" if no "Setup" or "Presetup" commands are present in the archive comment. If you prefer "Install" button, but do not need to execute any setup programs, you can add "Setup=<>" command. 15. WinRAR displays the current percent above the operation progress bar when repairing an archive containing the recovery record and when processing recovery volumes. 16. WinRAR limits the maximum possible volume size to 4 GB minus 1 byte when creating RAR volumes on a disk with FAT or FAT32 file system in volume size autodetecting mode. These file systems do not support 4 GB and larger files. 17. If "Wait if other WinRAR copies are active" option is enabled and WinRAR waits for another copy, you can press "Continue" button in command progress window to force WinRAR to stop waiting. So now "Continue" button allows to override the state of "Wait if other WinRAR copies are active" option for current operation. 18. WinRAR displays one password request instead of two, when saving an encrypted file back to RAR or ZIP archive after modifying it in some external editor. Previous WinRAR versions usually requested the password twice, both when extracting the original file and archiving its modified copy. Only RAR archives with encrypted file names were processed with the single password prompt. 19. New error code 10 ("no files") is added to list of error codes returned in command line mode by RAR and WinRAR. This new code can be returned by archive, extract, delete and repair commands. It means that RAR did not find any files matched the specified file or archive mask. 20. File name area in file overwrite dialog occupies several lines now. It makes possible to display much longer names. 21. Now switch -ep3 converts not only disk letters, but also UNC paths. So \\server\share will be converted to __server\share when archiving and restored to the original \\server\share when extracting with -ep3. 22. New "Background extraction" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog places WinRAR into background, when extracting files. You can save its default state with "Save settings" button in "General" part of extraction dialog, just like for other extraction options. "Background archiving" option from the default compression profile does not affect the extraction behavior anymore. 23. "Mode..." button in operation progress window is enabled also when extracting or testing archives. It provides access to "Command parameters" dialog, where you can set "Turn PC off when done" option for extraction and test operations. Previously this dialog was accessible only when archiving. 24. Bugs fixed: a) renaming a file in archive could also rename all other files with the same name in other folders of the same archive; b) previous versions displayed the wrong total packed size in "Info" command for multivolume CAB archives; c) in ZIP archives 'U' (update) and 'F' (fresh) commands could erroneously update even files not specified in the command line. It happened only for files in current folder which names matched files in ZIP archive. This bug was not present in usual 'A' (add) archiving mode.