How do I open a ISO, Zip, 7-Zip, IMG, or archive file?

[Moderator]

Q: How do I open a A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, or ZOO file?

A: In order to open most of these file types, you must have an archive program.
Archive programs will usually not only open these types of files, but will allow you to create them.
One archive program that I suggest using is IZarc.
Download/read about here:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_izarc/

Other archive programs may work better on some systems. If you have a problem using IZarc, see a list of alternatives here:
http://www.filehippo.com/software/compression/

Other note:
Windows ME, 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista can all read .ZIP files, as they have their own built in ZIP Archive program.

Why would I use an archive?
Archives are usually used for two reasons:
They keep entire groups of folders and files in one file, so they can be downloaded and shared easily.
Archives often contain compression features, allowing you to make grouped files smaller than they originally were.

Are there any cons from using an Archive?
The two biggest cons of using archives for storage are:
Being able to open it on all computers. Not all computers have archive software on them. Most operating systems handle .ZIP archives, but many will not handle archives like .RAR, or .ISO (Linux being an exception)
Using compression with archives can take time. The more you compress a file, the longer it will take to compress it in the first place, and the longer it will take for the next person to decompress it.


If you think something should be changed in this FAQ article, feel free to send me a personal message (Requires User Registration) through the forums.

One should scan for bugs before attempting to open files!

[Global Moderator]

Good point, Merlin. Especially if you have downloaded these files from an unknown source, file sharing website, P2P program or even given to you from your friend.

Many bugs live in these files.

yes yes yes ALWAYS scan. i always see people get infectons from just not caring or giveing the time to scan *censored* even i did that once and i regerted it

Why not use winrar?

[Global Moderator]

That's one of the available programs.

The one I prefer is 7-Zip.

I prefer winrar, I'm more used to it.

PowerArchiver 2009.

[Moderator]

Why not use winrar?

One biggest reason:
Its nagware...

Sure, its free, but, if your like me, and have points where you end up opening countless ZIP archives all at once for some process that must be done by cyber-hand, it just takes too long to click that "Continue" button.


I never really tried out 7-Zip though.

The biggest reason I liked IZArc:
It opens so many archives, and it doesnt require starting up with your PC, and its minimal enough that I can use it without having to search through countless buttons.

Older versions of WinRAR (I havent used an updated one in years) had countless unlabeled buttons in the program.

Alright maybe I'll try it out then. Sounds good.

whats the diffrence arent they all the same?

(i dont know much about compresson)

PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKZIPFIX

[Moderator]

PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKZIPFIX

Talk about complicated  : P

whats the diffrence arent they all the same?

In my opinion, there should only be one.
However, thats not possible.

Someone decided, "Hey! I want to make my own!" and so, they did. Each one thinks its the best. I really dont think there is a "best" one.

There are some honest improvements, some are improvements of old versions or other programs. I think you will find that most are really the same. Some were made so they could be for free though.


Tarball files are like zipped folders without the compression, much more common in Linux.

PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKZIPFIX

Talk about complicated  : P

Pkunzip is fairly straightforward. Pkunzip file.zip -d usually does it.

Zipping files is a bit more a pain, but still not beyond grasp- pkzip /eX C:\windows\system\*.INI INIS.ZIP

PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKZIPFIX

Talk about complicated  : P

whats the diffrence arent they all the same?

In my opinion, there should only be one.
However, thats not possible.

If there was only one, then it would be the first unzipping/zipping tool... OMG! That's PKZIP  (I think...)

If there was only one, then it would be the first unzipping/zipping tool... OMG! That's PKZIP  (I think...)

First archiving tool to use the ZIP format, maybe.

File compression routines date back to at least the 1960s: IBM had a compression program called SQUOZE that was commonly used to pack programs on the 709 and 7090 mainframes as part of the SHARE operating system. Previous programs almost certainly existed. During the 1980s, the company System Enhancement Associates (SEA) developed a shareware utility called ARC, based on earlier programs such as tar. At this time Phil Katz wrote PKARC (archiver) and PKXARC (extracter), which used the ARC file format but were faster. SEA sued him for copyright infringement, and he paid them $62,000. He first changed the names to PKPAK and PKUNPAK and eventually rewrote his programs to use a different file format and compression method. Thus were born PKZIP and PKUNZIP. The first version of PKZIP appeared in 1989.

First archiving tool to use the ZIP format, maybe.

Yep, that's what I meant- I'm pretty sure both ARC and ARJ are older formats the ZIP... (as confirmed by your soliliquoy)

They are all, pretty much, differently named bundles of implementations of common compression methods, notably the Lempel-Ziv-Welch method, first published in May 1977. You can get LZW libraries for many programming languages and roll your own if you have a mind to.

Is there one that uses Huffman compression? Or is that just another name for LZW?

roll your own if you have a mind to.

Like Microsoft with the old *.??_ files on most of their DMF media. I think the most annoying thing about the old (<DOS 6.22) EXPAND tool was that it didn't support wildcards (newer versions did, I believe), which meant if you needed to install something manually... it was a pain. But we all know microsoft- most of the time, rather then buy a license or something for most things- they just buy the company, and thus own the product.


And- Of course, a lot of the different implementations can/do use the same algorithms and simply have different file formats. The interesting thing is to say, Zip something, then RAR that ZIP, etc... and continue using different archivers to see how small it will get... which is generally when the space saved with each subsequent compression is less then the space overhead for the format itself.

Why? It amuses me. 

I once created a 50 megapixel 24 bit BMP image consisting of a uniformly black image with one white pixel in the top left hand corner, the file size was around 150 MB, then I compressed it using Winzip's "best" method, I forget just how small it got, about 20 KB I think.

Is there one that uses Huffman compression? Or is that just another name for LZW?

Huffman published his paper in 1952, his teacher had worked with Shannon (another big name). A variation called adaptive Huffman coding is somewhat related to the LZ family of algorithms, and has the advantage of being patent free. You find Huffman everywhere! Huffman coding today is often used as a "back-end" to some other compression method. DEFLATE (PKZIP's algorithm) and multimedia codecs such as JPEG and MP3 have a front-end model and quantization followed by Huffman coding. Modified Huffman coding is used in fax machines to encode black on white images (bitmaps). It combines the variable length codes of Huffman coding with the coding of repetitive data in run-length encoding.

[Moderator]

Zipping files is a bit more a pain, but still not beyond grasp- pkzip /eX C:\windows\system\*.INI INIS.ZIP

Forgot how weird IE was...

Anyways, I personally just put PKunzip in an empty folder, and drag the ZIP file on top of the PKUnzip program.
Did that on my desktop by accident once....

WinRAR has an anti-virus scan button.

try using Powerarchiver
does lols more than izarc

I prefer 7-Zip, the best free ware.