WinRAR – What’s new in the latest version
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<mask> 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.
Version 3.91
1. This version can decompress 7-Zip archives created with
LZMA2 algorithm.
2. Now a password is requested only once when unpacking 7z archives
with encrypted file names from context menu. WinRAR 3.90 asked it
twice.
3. This version can unpack tar.bz2 archives consisting of several
smaller bz2 streams merged together. Previous versions unpacked
only the first nested bz2 stream in such composite archive.
4. WinRAR displays CRC32 of files inside of usual .gz (not .tar.gz)
archives. Previous versions left this field blank for GZIP files.
5. Bugs fixed:
a) WinRAR 3.90 displayed “Save” button instead of “Open” or “OK”
in “Find archive” dialog (“Open archive” command in “File” menu
and “Browse…” command in archiving dialog);
b) WinRAR could display incorrect file names when browsing malformed
ZIP archives;
c) WinRAR 3.90 failed to decompress LZH archives created with
“-lh7-” algorithm;
d) WinRAR 3.90 could fail to delete a part of files after archiving
if delete to Recycle Bin was enabled. This bug was present
when working in Windows XP, but not in Windows Vista and Windows 7;
e) when unpacking ISO file using WinRAR “Extract files…” command
in Explorer context menu, WinRAR could unpack same archived files
twice during the same operation. It displayed the overwrite prompt
when unpacking files for the second time;
f) hexadecimal search in WinRAR 3.90 “Find” command and console RAR
“ih” command failed to find matches if first byte in search string
was greater than 127.
Version 3.90
1. WinRAR version for Windows x64 is available. If you use
Windows x64, it is strongly recommended to install 64 bit
WinRAR version. It provides a higher performance and better
shell integration than 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 behavior 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.
Version 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 to specify
WinRAR behavior when updating already existing files in 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<profile name> 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 of archiving dialog contains the group of
settings modifying the behavior of “Delete files after archiving”
option from “General” page:
a) Delete files. Delete files normally like in previous WinRAR
versions.
b) Move files to Recycle Bin. Deleted files are placed to
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
behavior 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 folder tree pane. WinRAR will store
new dimensions of this dialog.
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 allow to specify
an icon file containing an icon associated with shortcut.
11. New “Wipe temporary files” option in “Settings/Security” dialog
provides 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 WinRAR window.
17. Shift+Tab key combination can be used in 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.
Version 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.
Version 3.70
1. Numerous Windows Vista compatibility changes:
a) help format changed from old HLP to newer HTML based CHM;
b) GUI self-extracting modules attempt to request for
administrator permissions if they cannot create destination
folder under current user account;
c) Log file rar.log and WinRAR theme files are stored
in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder instead of 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 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 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 to create SFX archive,
which will request the administrative access when started
in Windows Vista.
Command line equivalent of this option is -iadm switch.
2. Added support for ISO 13346 (UDF) file format. This format
is frequently used in 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 separate line,
allowing much longer archive names than before;
c) when archiving, it displays the current compression ratio
in separate line;
d) it can use both standard Windows and classic WinRAR progress bars.
Turn on “Windows progress bars” option in WinRAR “Settings/General”
dialog to use standard progress bars. By default this option is
on if some Windows visual style is active and off if Windows Classic
theme is selected.
Windows progress bars are two color only, so they do not indicate
the current compression ratio. But now the ratio is displayed
in separate line;
e) “Mode…” button moved to bottom of window.
5. GUI self-extracting modules support following command line
switches:
-d<path> set the destination path
-p<pwd> specify a password
-s silent mode, hide all
-s1 same as -s
-s2 silent mode, hide start dialog
-sp<par> 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 SFX archive,
parse sfxcmd environment variable which contains this command line.
7. New switch -sc<charset>[objects] allowing to select character
sets for archive comments and list files. It replaces -fcu switch
introduced in RAR 3.60, which was removed from list of supported
switches. Now you 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 Internet
directly in WinRAR and then decided to save it on local disk.
9. “Word wrap” command added to “View” menu of WinRAR internal viewer,
so you can change the wrapping mode of already opened viewer window.
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 position of selected profile
in the list.
11. Operation progress is displayed when adding the recovery record.
12. If WinRAR is minimized to tray and 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 “File” menu allows Unicode names,
providing more reliable support for non-English archive names.
15. Stack overflow vulnerability has been corrected in password
processing module of console RAR and UnRAR. GUI WinRAR is not
affected. We are thankful to the iDEFENSE LABS for reporting this bug.