WinRAR 5.50 (64-bit)

- "Reenter password for verification" field is not displayed in password dialog when extracting or opening an encrypted archive. It is present only when archiving and only if "Show password" option is off.
- If you enabled "Use for all archives" option when entering the default password (Ctrl+P) and specified the empty password, extract and test commands will skip all encrypted archives.
- If you prefer to use "Install" button instead of "Extract" in SFX module, but do not need any setup programs, you can add "Setup=<>" command to archive comment or enter "<>" as setup name in "Advanced SFX options" dialog.
* We changed it to "Setup=<>" instead of "Setup" as in the first beta, because presence of specific parameter allows to enable this mode also through "Advanced SFX options" dialog, by entering "<>" as setup name.

# Bugs fixed:
- a) extraction operation activated from Explorer context menu could fail if several archives were selected and processed at once;
- b) WinRAR window title did not contain the current disk name,when browsing the root disk folder;
- c) items related to extraction were not present in Explorer context menu for 7-Zip self-extracting archives;
- d) sorting by "Type" in WinRAR shell did not work inside of archives.

- 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.

# Changes in ISO support:
- a)UDF support is upgraded to UDF 2.50 revision. It makes possible to unpack most of Blue-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.

# 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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* emp
- 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 "BackupMyData" archive folder and extract "Images" folder, it will be extracted as "Images", not as "BackupMyDataImages".
* 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.
- 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 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.
- Recovery volume processing involves less disk seek operations resulting in higher performance.
- You can select Windows 7 library in tree panel in extraction dialog and WinRAR will use its default save location as the destination path.
- "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.
- 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.
- 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 without any parameters.
- WinRAR displays the current percent above the operation progress bar when repairing an archive containing the recovery record and when processing recovery volumes.
- 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.
- 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.
- WinRAR displays one password request instead of two, when saving an encrypted file back to RAR or ZIP archive after modifying itin 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.
- 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.
- File name area in file overwrite dialog occupies several lines now.It makes possible to display much longer names.

# 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.

# Bugs fixed:

a) in WinRAR 3.92 -xd:pathfolder 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.

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.

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.

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 ZIParchives;

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.

1. WinRAR might crash when testing corrupt CAB files.

2. Beta 1 crashed on some of TAR.BZ2 archives.

3. Total progress bar could be displayed incorrectly in "Convert archives" command in beta 1.

4. SFX archives set the wrong value to "sfxcmd" environment variabe if user account control prompt was displayed when unpacking.

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.

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 'SoftwareWinRARPolicy' 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.

Bugs fixed:

a) "Convert" command could fail if original and resulting archives were multivolume and name of original archive included DBCS (Chinese, Japanese or Korean) characters;

b) WinRAR did not add "Extract to folder" item to Windows context menus for ZIP archives if Windows Compressed Folders was active.

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

2. Program Compatibility Assistant in Windows 7 will not display an erroneous "This program might not have installed correctly" message after closing RAR SFX archives created by this beta.

3. Improved compatibility with high DPI Windows display mode.

4. Bugs fixed:

a) beta 3 did not display archiving commands in context menu if user selected several archives;

b) beta 3 did not handle 'LongLink' records in TAR archives correctly;

c) recovery record based repair did not work correctly in previous beta versions;

d) beta 3 could display a folder icon for archived files without a file extension.

1. WinRAR displays only one password prompt when unpacking 7z archive
with encrypted file names.

2. Further improvements in shell extension performance. Now WinRAR
context menu must be more responsive when working with thousands
of selected files.

3. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR could display random characters as archive comment
when browsing some ZIP SFX archives, which do not contain
any archive comment;

b) switch -ed did not prevent extraction of empty folders;

c) WinRAR could fail to compress some of subfolders specified
in the command line if -n switch was present;

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

Bugs fixed:

- stack overflow vulnerability has been corrected in WinRAR module
processing 7-Zip archives;

- WinRAR GZip module could set a wrong file date when unpacking
GZip archives.

- Corrected a bug in multithreaded text compression module,
which under some circumstances might result in corrupt archived data.

This bug was present only in multithreaded mode and only
in WinRAR 3.60. RAR versions for other platforms are not affected.

- Resolved a compatibility issue preventing WinRAR 3.60 to run
in Windows 95.

- Multithreaded version of RAR compression algorithm improves
the compression speed on computers with several CPU,
dual core CPU and processors with hyperthreading technology.
Multithreading is enabled by default, but you can disable it
in "General" part of "Settings" dialog.
- In the command line mode you can control multithreading with
-mt switch.
- WinRAR can display the folder tree panel allowing to navigate
in disk and archive folders. Use "Options/Folder tree" submenu
to enable the folder tree. It can be configured separately
in file and archive management modes.
- Folder tree replaces "Browse for folder" command previously
available in "File" menu and uses its Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut.
- Now WinRAR "Rename" command also works with ZIP archives.
Previous versions could rename files only in RAR archives.
- Added decompression of LZH archives created with "-lh7-" algorithm.
- New "Remove duplicate folders from extraction path" option
in "Settings/Compression" dialog.
- If this option is on and you unpack an archive which root folder
has no files and only one 'somename' folder and if destination
folder is new or empty and also ends with '/somename', WinRAR
will exclude one 'somename' from resulting 'somename/somename' path.
- New "Define volume sizes..." button in "Settings/Compression".
This button activates "Define volume sizes" dialog. Here you
can customize the list of predefined volume sizes associated
with "Split to volumes, bytes" field in archiving dialog.
- Speed of RAR general compression increased for some data types.
Depending on data type and size the gain may achieve 5 - 15%.
- New "Rename automatically" option in the extraction dialog
and command line -or switch to rename extracted files automatically
if file with the same name already exists. You can also enable
the auto-renaming mode directly from the overwrite confirmation
prompt with "Rename All" button.
- Renamed files will get names like 'filename(N).txt',
where 'filename.txt' is the original file name and 'N' is a number.
- "Set modification time" option in "Advanced" part of extraction
dialog is accessible also for ZIP archives. Previously it could be
changed only for RAR archives.
- "Multithreading" option added to "Benchmark and hardware test"
command, so you can compare performance of usual and multithreaded
versions of RAR compression algorithm.
- New 'ch' (change archive parameters) command line mode command.
Its purpose is to apply switches like -av, -tl and -cl to archive.
- New 'cv' command line mode command. It provides the command line
interface to WinRAR "Convert archives" command. It is supported
only by winrar.exe, not by rar.exe.
- New command line -sl and -sm switches to set size
limits of processing files.
- New command line -fcu[file] switch allows to read archive
comments from Unicode files. It also modifies behavior
of "cw" command, setting the comment output format to Unicode.
- 7Z added to list of formats stored without compression
when using -ms switch without a parameter.
- Switch -e[+] is now supported by most of command line
operations including extracting and deleting files. Previously
it was supported by only archiving command.
- It is allowed to use environment variables in archive name
in archiving dialog, in destination path in extraction dialog,
in folder names on "Compression" and "Paths" pages in WinRAR
settings. For example, you can enter '%temp%' in "Folder for
temporary files" field.