WinRAR

ICE HOUSE

Im just wondering can someone explain in laymans terms what is WinRAR and why do most of my files appear with "strange" icons as oppose to the usual windows icons and have WinRAR associated with them. Even files that are not stored on the pc are showing like this for example I put an Xp cd in the machine and when I go to \support\tools the deploy.cab is showing with an icon like a bundle of books with a belt around them and a file type of Winrar archive.Just wondering how did this most likely happen and how can I return to the normal icons. Thanks

yoyo

ICE HOUSE wrote: »

Im just wondering can someone explain in laymans terms what is WinRAR and why do most of the files appear with "strange" icons as oppose to the usual windows icons and have WinRAR associated with them. Even files that are not stored on the pc are showing like this for example I put an Xp cd in the machine and when I go to \support\tools the deploy.cab is showing with an icon like a bundle of books with a belt around them and a file type of Winrar archive.Just wondering how did this most likely happen and how can I return to the normal icons. Thanks

WinRAR is a file archiving program, Cab files (cabnet files) is a extension typically used for a certain compression method, as is zip, rar, tar, 7z etc, some installers encrypt the cabnet files (install shield for eg) so you would need a install shield unpacker to unpack those ones, most of the others can be opened in winrar, the icons can be changed if you set another program such as windows zip support as default for the program I think, I dont see the point though as winrars the best archiving program *

Nick

* In my opinion!

Biggins

Winrar is a tool for enclosing all your files into a surrounding/encompassing "case" (file) and squashing them down.

Its like putting your clothes into a suitcase and squeezing as many in as possible, squashing them each in turn.
You then have the ability to lock the case/file and later open it too to get its original contents out again back to their original size and take them to to a location of your choice.

I hope the above makes sense and helps.

ICE HOUSE

yoyo wrote: »

WinRAR is a file archiving program, Cab files (cabnet files) is a extension typically used for a certain compression method, as is zip, rar, tar, 7z etc, some installers encrypt the cabnet files (install shield for eg) so you would need a install shield unpacker to unpack those ones, most of the others can be opened in winrar, the icons can be changed if you set another program such as windows zip support as default for the program I think, I dont see the point though as winrars the best archiving program *

Nick

* In my opinion!

Thanks but im just wondering also how to return the Pc to "normal" without stuff being archived \ compressed etc. Wondering how it got like this in the first place? I take it someone installed winRAR on my machine and ran it?

IrishTonyO

ICE HOUSE wrote: »

Thanks but im just wondering also how to return the Pc to "normal" without stuff being archived \ compressed etc. Wondering how it got like this in the first place? I take it someone installed winRAR on my machine and ran it?

The icons on any compressed file that is compatible with winrar, change to the winrar icon. The files themselves have not changed at all only the icon to them.
If you want to change which file types winrar works for and change the icons

(1) Open winrar
(2) Selection Options -> Settings -> Integration
(3) Remove check mark from file type you do not want to open with Winrar

ICE HOUSE

Thanks lads, I have it sorted now. Sometimes I need to use my head more :D