All file downloads corrupt?

[ironhead_72hd]

I have been using winmx since it first came out and now am having problems after reinstalling after a hard drive crash.  EVERY file I download comes up as corrupt when they are compressed files.  Zip, rar, does not matter.  Using winrar and every one says file is corrupt.  Help anyone?

[Joshua203]

Hi i thinnk it would help people to help you if you give some info about your setup, like the operating system you use  and anything you can think of

[ironhead_72hd]

XP Home on a laptop HP Presario.  It worked fine before the crash.  Now for some reason all compressed files come up corrupt.  I can download audio and video files with no problems.  Just the compressed files are corrupt and they are from different users.  I think windows update ran a few things before I caught it and turned it off too.  Could it have done something to stop the files from being read?

[White Stripes]

when you say 'corrupt' what is the error message? like 'unexpected end of archive' or 'checksum error' ... etc ?

[ironhead_72hd]

Using winrar the window pops up saying "!   F:\incompletes\corrupt\(Free Energy) Solar_Wind_Controller.zip: The archive is corrupt".  This happened with the first 10 or so files today but now seems to be not corrupt on other downloads after them.  They first files will still not open but the later ones open ok.

[White Stripes]

try to repair it ... if its not 0 length...

[White Stripes]

could try searching/redownloading too.... archives are much more sensitive to the ... uh... shortcomings of the winmx hash system than an mp3 (which would just make a glurp sound) or avi (missing/jittered frame(s).. or glitch in sound...)

[Joshua203]

Reading your latest reply I think the problem fixed itself by misracle?

I can't help wondering why you would want to stop updates on windows though hmmmmzzz.. well i can think of one reason and that one would mean you need a better one hehehehehe

[White Stripes]

a good tip for anyone with a harddrive 'crash' (or the beginnings of what seems like one) or other hdd problems...

on xp click start then run

in the box type "echo y | chkdsk c: /f" (no quotes ofc)
a black box will appear and quickly disappear..... reboot your computer.....

your computer will start to boot windows then the screen will turn light blue with white text saying a disk check has been scheduled (and give a 10 second countdown to cancel it .... do not cancel it) .... after the scan completes windows will 'reboot' from that point (this is normal) and then start normally....

note: the ' | ' is the symbol also present on the key with ' \ ' ... just hold down shift to make it.... (the symbol has many names... 2 of which are 'vertical bar' and 'pipe' .... its the second that is used with the console (the black box))

[ironhead_72hd]

I have tried the repair option in winrar and it does nothing to help. All archives downloaded since the first ones have worked without a hitch.  I will try redownloading them and see if that solves the problem.

[Bluey_412]

and allow windows to do updates, especially XP
SP2 and SP3 versions of XP are good, and you have no reason to stop the updates if ur XP is not a pirated copy with one of the known bad keys

[ironhead_72hd]

No not pirated copy of XP.  Just that there were so many glitches in others computers I knew when they updated all the time and they slowed down the whole system so much I did not want that for my system.  I have nearly zero down time and the only times I have had a problem were twice when the hard drives had physical crashes.  Still not sure about the updates though.

[White Stripes]

go to update.microsoft.com using IE.... download only SP3 .... the slowdowns will happen when downloading IE7 and IE8 and the .NET runtimes....  after installing sp3 use the 'custom' button on MS update to select what you do and dont want.... (if you dont want ie7 or ie8 uncheck them.... also uncheck WGA notifier and any .NET versions newer than 1.1 ... xp ships with 1.1 so you want the security updates for that.... but if you dont use any .NET apps you dont want to install anything newer... )

always make sure you install SP3 -before- installing any version of IE newer than 6 ... if you have 7 or 8 installed uninstall them before installing SP3..... then if wanted reinstall them after.... trust me...

wanna see something a bit scary? goto www.secunia.com and run the online scanner....