• Repairing a Zipped Archive

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    #390783

    hello Loungers

    I am looking for a utility that can repair WinZip Zipped Archives.

    I have such an archive that can be unzipped, but when it comes to a MS-Word document, it tells me that it could not continue. Something about a checksum being invalid.

    I tried opening the document from within the archive, and it failed as well.

    Any suggestions?

    Wassim

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    • #695475

      If you do a Google search for ‘PKZIP DOS Download’ (without the quotes), you’ll find many sites where you can still download PKZIP for DOS, for example http://www.frostburg.edu/admin/acacom/shar…3.x/pkz204g.htm%5B/url%5D. This comes with a utility PKZIPFIX that can repair .zip archives. You’ll have to use the Command Prompt, PKZIPFIX is not a Windows program.

      If you would prefer something for WIndows, do a Google for ‘zip repair utility’ (without the quotes), or something like that.

    • #695528

      Wassim, if a ZIP file is seriously munged, the contents are almost always unrecoverable. I don’t know if the evaluation versions of PKZip come with recovery capability, go ahead and look. If you wish, PM me and we can arrange that you e-mail it to me and I’ll have a shot at recovery with registered PKZip 5.5.

    • #695476

      I just performed the following experiment:

      1. I made a copy of a .zip filem let’s call the copy Bad.zip.
      2. I used a hex editor to change an arbitrary bye in the file.
      3. I tried exploding the Bad.Zip with Stuffit Expander 6. I got a nasty mesage stating that the file had a CRC error.
      4. I then tried expanding with ZIPCentral. ZipCentral also reported a CRC error.
      5. I then tried the Repair in ZIPCentral, it did Repair, but the file was corrupt and Excel could not open the workbook that had been zipped.

      However, ZIPCentral has been able to repair other files.

      • #695611

        I Just tried PKZIPFIX on the file I referenced in the other posting.

        No luck.

      • #695692

        Hi Howard

        It has always been my understanding that zip archives can only be repaired if the damage is in the index/ headers of the archive itself, not in the files contained therein. For instance, if the headers incorrectly report information about the size of one of the files, this can be corrected, thus allowing the archiver to extract files correctly etc… I’m not sure of all the details, but here are some typical messages from PKUnzip, indicating damage – some repairable, other not:

        PKUNZIP: (W[01,02]) Warning! File has bad table

        The Imploded file being tested or extracted has an error in its encoding.
        The file is probably corrupt or not a .ZIP file. Files that have been
        damaged in this way cannot be recovered.

        PKUNZIP: (W03) Warning! File has bad table

        The Reduced file being tested or extracted has an error in its encoding.
        The file is probably corrupt or not a .ZIP file. Files that have been
        damaged in this way cannot be recovered.

        PKUNZIP: (W04) Warning! XXXXX.ZIP – error in ZIP, use PKZIPFIX.

        The named .ZIP file has a corrupted file index. Use PKZIPFIX to
        reconstruct the .ZIP file. You may also receive this message if you
        attempt to extract a file which is not a .ZIP file.

        If the file is less than 22 bytes in length it cannot be a .ZIP file and
        the “use PKZIPFIX” message will not be shown.

        But I’m not surprised that the repair utilities were unable to rectify the “damage” you did altering a random byte value. I can’t see any way of them knowing what to change back to what to make a CRC checksum correct again! grin My guess is that the byte you selected to change was part of the XLS and changing it corrupted the workbook, in the same way it would had you altered the actual XLS in this manner.

        Alan

        • #695701

          I agree, that’s why I “randomly” chose to change a bit that appeared to be part of the file, not in headers, etc.

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