WinRAR is an application used to reassemble a multiple part archive into its original form. Today's binary news readers take on most of the reassembly work, but occasionally an archive will fail to extract. That's when you need WinRAR, an essential tool for any serious Usenet traveler.

WinRAR is an archiving and compression program that has become very popular for its ability to split the archive it creates into many pieces. This is very useful for getting large files because of two reasons. First, you can download several parts immediately, and several parts later to spread your download out the way you want. Two, if there is a problem with one part, the solution is to simply get a good copy of the failed part. The bottom line - if you're looking for a tool that can reassemble a 47 part RAR archive, look no further.

When you run WinRAR for the first time, the setup window will ask what files you want to associate with WinRAR (see Figure 1). Because WinRAR is such an awesome program, we recommend that you change nothing since you'll run into ZIP files on occasion as well. Click "OK" and that will take care of the installation process.

To reassemble an archive, first find your download folder. The RAR archive should be there, waiting patiently to be reassembled. WinRAR integrates nicely into Windows; just double click on any RAR icon to start the reassembly process (see Figure 2). One you do this, the WinRAR program will open and display the archive's contents (see Figure 3).

To extract the contents of an archive, simply drag and drop the file (or files), in this case slyck_videos_ep_6.avi. This give you a lot of flexibility as to where you extract the file to - perhaps your desktop, maybe an organize media folder, wherever. You can also manually navigate and extract an archive:

1. Move up one folder - Navigate your hard drive using the explorer style interface (see Figure 3). This button moves you up one folder to the parent folder.

2. Extract the Archive - When you find the archive, the RAR files will be listed in the explorer style window (see Figure 4). Double click on any RAR icon. That will expose the archive's contents (see Figure 3) - then click the "Extract to" button.

You could just drag and drop the contents, but if you insist on doing thing manually, a window will appear where you can select a folder to extract the archive. The default setting is usually very handy, so we'll just click OK and away it goes.

If there are any missing or corrupt files, you'll have to find a way to repair or replace them. Check out our PAR & PAR2 Files section for more information.