Certain mods wont extract?

[sullyvanj93]

Lately I have been having issues with certain mods not extracting (some of these mods I have used past versions and were able to use them just fine).

 

The file downloads, and when I go to extract it with winrar, it says "The archive is either in unknown format or damaged". There are about a dozen or so mods that I have found to have this issue.

 

I am having these issues on multiple computers as well, as I tried to download them on my second PC, extract, then use a zip drive. But no dice. Any ideas on how to fix/bypass this problem?

 

And yes, I have tried simply redownloading the mod. Doesn't help in the slightest :/

[JimboUK]

Have you tried updating Winrar or using 7zip?

[SayinNuthin]

I have some very old external drives (that have been through a lot) that contain some old Rar files, some of them substantial. Fo3 'jessi V4' for instance, is over 250meg with all her add-ons and if I ask WinZip to unpack or extract in it will fail, every time.

 

But I can get Jessi out of there by copying the whole archive to the desktop and using all 3 apps, WinZip, WinRar and 7z. All of which are different ages and all of which have their strengths and weaknesses. The file structure of the archive contents almost always comes out without damage but use another app [Extract-as] to compare and make quite certain. Then if necessary try extracting each file, individually, dragging AND asking the app to extract until you've got everything out and reassembled, checking that the components are the correct size.

 

Tedious and if your archives as so ***ked up as to require this treatment there is probably something very wrong somewhere. There are .zip and .rar repair tools but many (especially the 'free' ones) are thinly disguised malware and the best of them, I've found can only repair the header, I've never found one that can restore the contents.

 

Oh, and if your machine is set to a different region then check the language settings, Kanji (Japanese) archives for example will need every Kanji character removed from the file's title before a machine set to Western will open them.

 

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If you want perfect, you'd best ask God to grow you one :laugh:

[sullyvanj93]

Ive tried redownloading a new version of winrar, and have also tried 7zip and winzip, although not together as you suggested. Unfortunately, one of the mods in question is willow (one of my favorites), and it is the .bsa file that seems to be corrupted in my multiple downloads. I will try using the different programs on specific files, but i have my doubts that the .bsa is readable by any archive program i've tried :/

[SayinNuthin]

one of the mods in question is willow (one of my favorites), and it is the .bsa file that seems to be corrupted in my multiple downloads.

 

 

Which is 250 meg, ouch! Plenty of time for the process to hiccup. Dumb question but you have tried the various programs 'Repair' functions haven't you? WinRar has write report as well as Info. 7z has 'test-archive' and so on. You should have;

 

24 folders.

3,369 total files.

349,721,831 total length.

214,000,092 packed

for Willow 1-05-41779-1-05

 

And if you use NMM etc. have you tried Dling manually (or visa-versa)

[sullyvanj93]

 

Which is 250 meg, ouch! Plenty of time for the process to hiccup. Dumb question but you have tried the various programs 'Repair' functions haven't you? WinRar has write report as well as Info. 7z has 'test-archive' and so on. You should have;

 

 

Exactly... and given how my internet has been acting up and is being unbearably slow with download speeds, I suppose it is more than possible that the file is simply failing to download correctly, But there are other mods that are much smaller that I've been seeing errors with, and redownloading doesnt seem to help.

 

I actually havent tried the repair functions, as the only thing I usually do with winrar is right click and extract to a folder. I shall explore the program a bit and see if it resolves my issue. Thanks for the tip!

 

As for the mod managers, I never have really gotten into using them. I tried using both the NMM and the FOMM recently to try to resolve these issues, but as it didn't help, I quickly reverted to my manual installations. I'm kind of a creature of habit like that. Probably will get into using the MMs soon enough, though.

[JimboUK]

A couple of people on my Steam list have mentioned corrupt downloads of late, maybe it's because the servers have been overloaded?

[SayinNuthin]

A couple of people on my Steam list have mentioned corrupt downloads of late, maybe it's because the servers have been overloaded?

 

Out of interest, how would that differ from trying to get an archive from an impaired external drive? As in, every time you try to copy from the the drive, if the archive is big enough, or the transfer slow enough some part of the information is lost or scrambled. So you end up with x quantity of copies of the same .rar or whatever, all with damage but in (theoretically) different places.

 

Rebuilding the contents still aught to be possible unless the servers are glitching at the same point each time you attempt to download, thus somehow giving you identically damaged copies.. Which would seem odd to my limited understanding of this.

 

Apart from the NMM/FOMM end of things (of which I know nothing) and I nor our friend here doesn't use.

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- BTW, Another tip, I'd forgotten because I rarely need to use it, is to change the connection method to get a 'differently damaged' version of the archive. I found switching between USB to FireWire has this effect. Might it be possible to do a similar trick with your internet connection?

[alfredabc1]

Try repairing your RAR files. That's the only option which will help you out at such situations. Visit this link to find out how's it's done http://youtu.be/T5YbhglNnwg