What's new in the latest version of WinRAR and RAR  

New! WinRAR version 4.0

    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 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.

WinRAR is compatible with Windows 7 and Vista

All versions of WinRAR from version 3.90 onwards are compatible with Windows 7. Plus all versions of WinRAR from version 3.70 onwards are compatible with Windows Vista.  

Previous Releases:

   Version 3.93

   1. Bugs fixed:

      a) in WinRAR 3.92 -xd:\path\folder switch could also exclude folders,
         which path does not match the path specified in the switch
         and only the folder name is the same as specified;
     
      b) switches -y -or did not work correctly together. Switch -or was
         ignored in presence of -y.

   
   Version 3.92

   1. If you start WinRAR command from Explorer context menu in multiple
      monitor configuration, the command dialog will be displayed
      on the same monitor as context menu. In previous versions it was
      always displayed on primary monitor.

   2. WinRAR "Compress and email..." context menu command adds the archive
      name to email subject. Previous versions left the subject blank.

   3. In RAR 3.91 -x switch could also exclude folders from archiving
      even if mask contained wilcard characters and did not contain a path.
      For example, -x*. excluded all those folders, which do not have
      the extension in the name. Now -x switch uses RAR 3.80 approach
      for masks without path, excluding folders only if mask does not
      contain wildcards and matches the folder name exactly.

   4. Bugs fixed:

      a) WinRAR 3.91 reported the incorrect "Unexpected end of archive"
         error, when opening an empty ZIP archive created with
         "New WinRAR ZIP archive" context menu command;

      b) if "Delete archive" option was enabled when unpacking several
         ZIP archives and if one of archives was damaged, WinRAR did not
         delete archives after the damaged one, even if they were unpacked
         successfully;

      c) if file matched two different masks in RarFiles.lst, WinRAR
         could select the last match. Normally, if neither of masks
         is a subset of another, the first match must be chosen. 

WinRAR / RAR 3.90 

1. WinRAR version for Windows x64 is available. If you use Windows x64, it is strongly recommended you install the 64 bit WinRAR version. It provides a higher performance and better shell integration than the 32 bit version.

2. RAR compression speed is improved for multi-core and multi-CPU systems. This improvement is most noticeable in Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.

3. "Remove duplicate folders from extraction path" option in Settings/Compression" dialog is replaced by more universal "Remove redundant folders from extraction path" option. This option will eliminate redundant archive name based folders from extraction path if you unpack an archive with "Extract to DestName\" context menu command and if archive root folder contains only one folder and no files.

4. Changes in "Extraction path and options" dialog:

a) "New folder" button creates a new subfolder in currently selected folder;

b) F2 key renames a selected folder in the folders tree;

c) F5 key updated the tree pane contents;

d) Del key removes a selected folder in the folders tree.

5. You can enable "Show seconds" option in "Settings/File list" dialog if you wish to see seconds in file dates in file list in WinRAR shell.

6. "Where to check for SFX archives" options group in "Settings/Integration/Context menus items" dialog lets you to control processing of SFX archives in context menus. For example, if you frequently right click ".exe" files on slow network disks, you can turn off "Network disks" options to minimize the delay before displaying the context menu.

7. If you sort files by name in the file list in WinRAR shell, WinRAR will use the new logical file name sorting, same as in Windows Explorer, considering digits in file names by their numerical value. So files will be sorted as 1.txt, 2.txt, 10.txt instead of previous 1.txt, 10.txt, 2.txt. This new sort of behaviour is available in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and newer.

8. Ctrl+W key combination can be used to close the main WinRAR window also as WinRAR viewer windows. "View as Windows text" shortcut in WinRAR viewer changed from Ctrl+W to Ctrl+I.

9. New command line switch -r- disables recursion completely. So 'rar a -r- arc dirname' command will add only the empty dirname folder and ignore its contents. By default, if dirname does not include wildcards, RAR adds its contents even if -r switch is not specified.

10. If used when extracting, the new command line switch -ai forces RAR to ignore file attributes. When using this switch, extracted files will always have attributes assigned by operating system to a newly created file by default.

11. If output file name is not specified in "cw" command, console RAR will send comment data to stdout.

12. When compressing stdin data with -si[name] switch, RAR sets modification time of archived entry to current system time. Previous RAR versions did not fill this field, resulting in meaningless modification time for stdin.

13. Message displayed when you place the mouse cursor on WinRAR tray icon includes the archive name now. Previously only time left and total percent were displayed for archiving operations.

14. New 'Shutdown' variable in 'Software\WinRAR\Policy' registry key allows to disable "Turn PC off when done" option for security reasons. Read "Configuration settings/Registry variables" for more details.

15. Better shell extension performance. Now WinRAR context menu will be more responsive when working with thousands of selected files.

16. Improved compatibility with high DPI Windows display mode.

17. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR could fail to open tar or tar.gz archive if such archive contained a file larger than 8 GB;

b) WinRAR context menu did not work properly in Windows 7 beta if icons in context menus were enabled and user clicked a file inside of Windows 7 Library folder;

c) previous WinRAR versions failed to rename files having 5 or more continuous spaces in the name. WinRAR shell does not display such spaces for safety reasons, because they can hide an actual file extension. But this security measure prevented the rename command to work properly.

 

RAR / WinRAR 3.80 

1. Added support for ZIP archives containing Unicode file names in UTF-8 format. When creating ZIP archive, WinRAR stores names in Unicode only if they cannot be stored correctly using the current single byte character set.

2. Added decompression support for WinZip AES encrypted ZIP archives.

3. Improved Unicode support for RAR and ZIP archive names.

4. "Ask before overwrite" and "Skip existing files" update modes are now available in archiving dialog. They allow specifying WinRAR behaviour when updating already existing files in an archive. Unlike already available "Fresh existing files only" and "Add and update files", these new modes ignore file date and compare only file names.

Command line equivalents of these modes are:

a) switch -o enables "Ask before overwrite" archiving mode;

b) switch -o- enables "Skip existing files" archiving mode;

c) switch -o+ enables "Overwrite all" mode (default for archiving).

5. New "Add to context menu" option in "Profile parameters" dialog. If this option is on, the profile name will be displayed in Explorer context menus allowing to activate a profile from context menu.

6. New -cp switch allows to select a compression profile in command line mode. It is supported only by GUI WinRAR.exe, not by rar.exe.

7. New "Options" page in the archiving dialog contains the group of settings modifying the behaviour of "Delete files after archiving" option from "General" page:

a) Delete files. Delete files normally as in previous WinRAR versions.

b) Move files to Recycle Bin. Deleted files are placed in the Recycle Bin.

Command line equivalent of this option is -dr switch.

c) Wipe files. Before deleting, file data are overwritten by zero bytes to prevent recovery of deleted files.

Command line equivalent of this option is -dw switch.

All these options have an effect only if "Delete files after archiving" is on. You can enable any of these options in the default compression profile to change the default behaviour of "Delete files after archiving".

8. WinRAR "Extraction path and options" dialog is now resizable. You can use the mouse to drag its border to the desired size and provide more space for the folder tree pane. WinRAR will store these new dimensions.

9. New "Update" SFX script command and "Update mode" group of options in "Update" page of "Advanced SFX options" dialog. These command and options allow to check time and implement file time based updating;

10. SFX script "Shortcut" command and "Add shortcut..." command in "Advanced SFX options" dialog now allows specifying an icon file containing an icon associated with the shortcut.

11. New "Wipe temporary files" option in "Settings/Security" dialog provides a more secure, though slower, way to delete temporary WinRAR files.

12. WinRAR and RAR display the total progress bar when unpacking a multivolume RAR archive if all volumes are present in the same folder.

13. WinRAR and RAR automatically expand names of environment variables in list files. For example, a list file can contain lines like:

%windir%\*.exe

%USERPROFILE%\Desktop

This feature is available only in Windows RAR version.

14. Added support of TAR archives with non-zero "extra field" data.

15. Added support of TAR archives, which does not contain the end of archive entry consisting of 512 zero bytes.

16. Improved Unicode support when dragging files from the WinRAR window.

17. Shift+Tab key combination can be used in the main WinRAR window to switch the input focus between interface elements (files, comment, tree, address) in reverse order. In previous versions Shift+Tab used the same order as Tab.

18. Corrected a possible WinRAR crash when opening truncated UDF ISO files.

 

RAR / WinRAR 3.71

 

1. Archive names in rar.log error log file always include the full path.

2. WinRAR tray icon is compatible with high DPI display modes.

3. If you modified a file in archive with encrypted names using an external editor, WinRAR will not ask for archive password again when prompting to update a file. It will use a password which you entered when opening an archive,

4. Bugs fixed:

a) switch -tl and "Set archive time to latest file time" option could fail in previous version. Sometimes they set archive time to current system time instead of latest file time;

b) if -ag switch mask contained archive number, month and minute characters, WinRAR placed 'I' character instead of minute value into generated archive name for archive numbers exceeding 1;

c) high ASCII names in ISO files using ISO 9660 format without Joliet format extension were displayed incorrectly;

d) WinRAR could crash when decompressing some of corrupt RAR archives;

e) if "Turn PC off when done" option was set in "Convert archives" command, WinRAR turned PC off after converting the first archive in selected group instead of after converting the entire group;

f) if user specified a non-existent destination path in SFX archive in Vista, SFX could enter into infinite "create new SFX window" loop;

g) WinRAR could fail to unpack an individual file from subfolder of ACE archive using the drag and drop.

 

RAR / WinRAR 3.70

 

1. Numerous WinRAR Vista compatibility changes:

a)     Help format changed from the old HLP to newer HTML based CHM;

b)     GUI self-extracting modules will attempt to request administrator permissions if they cannot create a destination folder under the current user account;

c)     Log file rar.log and WinRAR theme files are stored in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder instead of the WinRAR program files folder.

Exported settings file settings.reg is also stored in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder by default, but it is possible to select another folder in "Save WinRAR settings" and "Load WinRAR settings" dialogs.

WinRAR searches for the registration key and settings.reg, both in its program files folder and in %APPDATA%\WinRAR;   

It is possible to set the string value "AppData" in Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Paths to override the default %appdata%\WinRAR path for WinRAR settings.

For example, if you wish to store theme files in the WinRAR folder, set this value to "c:\Program Files\WinRAR".

d)     Vista compatibility changes in WinRAR shell integration;

e)     New "Request administrative access" option in "Advanced" page of "Advanced SFX options" allows creation of SFX archives, which will request the administrative access when started in Windows Vista. 

The command line equivalent of this option is the -iadm switch.

2. Added support for ISO 13346 (UDF) file format. This format is frequently used for ISO images of DVD disks.

3. Added Unicode support for ISO 9660 files, so WinRAR should handle non-English file names in .iso files better.

4. Design changes in window displaying archiving and extraction progress:

a)     it provides more space for file names, allowing lengthy names;

b)     it displays the current archive name in a separate line, allowing much longer archive names than before;

c)     when archiving, it displays the current compression ratio in a separate line;

d)     it can use both standard Windows and classic WinRAR progress bars.

Turn on the "Windows progress bars" option in WinRAR "Settings/General" dialog to use standard progress bars. By default this option is on if a Windows visual style is active and off if Windows Classic theme is selected.

Windows progress bars are two colors only, so they do not indicate the current compression ratio. But now the ratio is displayed in a separate line;

e)       "Mode..." button moved to bottom of window.

5. GUI self-extracting modules support the following command line switches:

-d· set the destination path

-p specify a password

-s· silent mode, hide all

-s1 same as -s

-s2 silent mode, hide start dialog

-sp· specify parameters for setup program

6. GUI self-extracting modules do not pass the entire command line to setup program like they did in previous versions.

If you need to get access to entire command line of an SFX archive, parse the sfxcmd environment variable which contains this command line.

7. New switch -sc[objects] allows the selection of character sets for archive comments and list files. It replaces -fcu switch introduced in RAR 3.60, now removed from list of supported switches. You now need to specify -scuc instead of -fcu to use Unicode comments. Unlike -fcu, -sc also supports OEM and ANSI charset.

8. New "Save archive copy as..." command in "File" menu.

This command may be useful if you opened an archive from the Internet directly in WinRAR and then decided to save it to a local disk.

9. "Word wrap" command added to "View" menu of WinRAR internal viewer, so you can change the wrapping mode of an already opened viewer window.

The state of this option is not stored between viewing sessions. If you need to change the default word wrap mode, use WinRAR "Settings/Viewer" dialog.

10. Buttons "Up" and "Down" added to "Organize profiles" dialog. Using these buttons you can change the position of a selected profile in the list.

11. Operation progress is displayed when adding the recovery record.

12. If WinRAR is minimized to the tray and the mouse is over its icon, WinRAR diplays a message about the current operation progress.

In previous versions it included only percent done, now it also contains the time left information.

13. Console RAR displays "Calculating the control sum" message when calculating CRC32 control sum for newly created RAR volume.

Previous versions also calculated the volume control sum, but did it silently.

14. Archives history list in the "File" menu allows Unicode names, providing more reliable support for non-English archive names.

15. A stack overflow vulnerability has been corrected in the password processing module of console RAR and UnRAR. GUI WinRAR is not affected. We are thankful to the iDEFENSE LABS for reporting this bug.