Opening rar files is easy and free. All you need is a software that is designed to do so. Perform the installation once you find and download it, and the program will usually associate itself with all of the rar files inside your system. Some will perform automatic association, but most will require you to do it manually which is as easy as ticking a check box. Once it is associated, you can open any rar file just by double-clicking on it or using the right-click menu in Windows explorer.

Keep in mind that you don't need to purchase any software to open rar files. You don't even have to use a shareware that keeps popping-up a message regularly reminding you to upgrade to the pro version to do it. It is completely free of charge and free of annoying marketing message!

However, before finding out which program you should use, let's find out about what rar is actually. You can skip this boring part, though:)

Rar is just one of the many compressed archives. Just like a zip archive, it can contain one or several files. The reason many people choose this compression format instead of others like zip is it has better compression rate even though the compression and extraction process could take a little bit longer. Furthermore, it supports what is called as redundancy, which makes rar files more resistant to corruption and, in case they still get damaged, they can be recovered. However, how much you can recover a corrupt rar file depends on how bad the damage is.

Other things that many people prefer to use this format is its support on strong password protection and file splitting ability. This splitting feature is pretty useful if you have a giant size file to be uploaded to file sharing sites or sent to your friends online. Instead of uploading or sending a huge size file, which makes it longer either to upload or download it, the file is splitted into several volumes that each has smaller size.

If you often download files from file sharing sites like MegaUpload or Rapidshare, you should have found files that are compressed in rar format and many of the files are splitted into several volumes. The name of the volumes usually in the sequential order like part01.rar, part02.rar, part03.rar.

Top Free Software to Open Rar Archives

Here you come. Below is the list of top free software that able to open and extract rar files beside supporting a large number of other archives such as zip, 7-z, ace, cab, iso, rpm, tar, jar, and so on.

Among any other, 7-zip is probably the most recommended freeware. I've seen a lot of compliments on the features it has. If you compare it with a commercial rar opener, you will likely to find some features that the commercial one doesn't have. Moreover, its 7-z format can be used as a rar alternative since it also has good compression rate. 7-zip works under Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista.

Izarc is a free extractor and archiver armed with loads of features as well like archiver repair tool, archive splitter, converter, encryptor, decryptor, customizable right-click menu, virus scanning, etc.

Tugzip is another one you should try. Lots of features such as ability to perform automatic backup, make a self-extracting archive, virus scanning, and so on.

Universal Extractor is a pure, fast extractor. What makes it awesome is the huge number of compressed formats it supports. I recommend you to take a look at the list of the supported archive formats.

ExtractNow is the one that will make you able to extract multiple rar files from different folders at once.

Now the question is which one you should choose. The answer depends on your preferences, though. If you want to know which one is best for your need, then try these free programs one by one. I myself use Izarc on my computer. How about you? Which one you choose or you think is the best one? Or perhaps you know other similar free applications that are well worth mentioning?

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If you often accidentally press the caps lock during typing like me here, you can completely disable it using Caps Lock Changer. Alternatively, still with the same application, you can make it useful by changing it to other key like underscore, tab, enter, esc, delete, backspace, home, insert, and many other keys. After you apply the changes, it will sit in your tray and run in the background.

Caps Lock Changer is free, works under Windows XP / Vista / 2003 / 2K, and can be downloaded here.

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While it is a good way to reduce the size of your files, sometimes you may find the zip file you've downloaded can't be opened because of some error such as CRC errors. Depending on how bad the damage is, you may be able to recover some of your damaged archives using Object Fix Zip. Like the maker says:

"This software is designed for testing, fixing and processing of corrupt or unusable ZIP archive files that are partially damaged or not completely downloaded"

To save time, it allows you to recover multiple damaged zip files at once. The original archives won't be modified if you choose to save the result of the recovery attempt as new archives.

It is free, can be operated under Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, NT, Me, 98, 95, and can be downloaded from here.

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Some errors on your your PSD and PDD file make your Adobe Photoshop can't open them normally as it used to be. They are corrupted, damaged, broken, whatever you name it. What this program does is trying to use some algorithm to detect the causes and perform a restoration attempt if any fix can be applied. Some of the files may not get recovered 100% but some others may do.

This application claims to support the recovery of:

• the image and the separate layers
• pixels, color depth, dimension, the paletter of the layers and image
• uncompressed and RLE compressed images
• PSD image with depth of 1, 8, 16, 32 bits per channel
• PSD and PDD files on corrupted medias, such as floppy disks, Zip disks, CDROMs, etc
• multiple Photoshop image files
• PSD image with color mode of bitmap, grayscale, indexed, RGB, CMYK, mutlichannel, duotone, lab

You can also perform the recovery process of a PSD file through the right click menu in Windows Explorer if you don't want to do the drag and drop operation every time you want to scan a damaged one. Command line parameters are supported as well. You can read here to find out how this application does the restoration.

Despite of the name, Advanced PSD Repair is free.

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Getting bored with the standard clock appearance in your tray area? Clock Tray Skins Lite has quite many skins that you can choose from for a different or unique display. The options also let you to decide which items to be displayed or hidden so you can have a clock display formatted according to your preferences.



Show or hide the date, day of the week, seconds, or use 12 hour format, it is all up to you. Use transparent background as well if you like it. The skins can be selected from its main window. Every time you click a skin, the clock display will change instantly without pressing any activation button. Clock Tray Skins Lite is totally free, but if you like it you might want to take a look at what its advanced version offers. Windows XP and Vista are supported.

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Adding an image for the drives is a breeze even for a novice user using the so-called Drives Background Image. An average computer user, not a geek one, who simply uses it for typing or other kind of general computer tasks would love it for its easy to use nature. Select the image, the drive, set it, and you're done.

What makes it different from other instant drive background changer software is its ability to replace the backgrounds of either a single drive or multiple drives simultaneously. In other words, you can use this to change each drive's background to make each stands out from the rest, or to replace the whole drives' backgrounds at once in no time. Removing the changes to get back to the default is easy as well. Fast, simple, straightforward, free, and supports Windows Vista / XP.

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Keeping up with the updated version of an application will give many advantages such as more features, fix error, better display, etc. Whatever it is, there should be an improvement. Now, do you want the latest version of Adobe Flash Player? Then go to this page as it is where the newest ones can be downloaded for free. 3D effects, enhanced sound APIs, and better visual performance are some of the enhancements you can get from Flash Player 10. You can also find the uninstaller for several versions at the page.

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Since Internet Explorer 7 shows up, this browser is getting better. However, no matter how good the features of an application are, error happens sometimes. While most of the features Repair IE has are actually designed to change many settings in the browser, its ability to reset Internet Explorer functions back to default can be the only help you need if the browser suddenly gets error or crash or other problems.

Unfortunately, the developer doesn't clearly state which version is supported. It is only said that it works for Windows 98, Me, XP and Vista. Does it work for Internet Explorer 7 and the older version? Many people still have Internet Explorer 5 and 6.

If the errors unable to be removed by this free application, then you should find another way which is perhaps a complicated one. For a simple fix, replace it with a better browser like Firefox or Google Chrome.

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I love it! Clickey is a super tiny, free, simple, portable, and recommended software if you want to have typewriter sound every time you press your computer keyboard button or if you want to make sure that the button you click on an on-screen keyboard is pressed. You get up to 26 different sounds ranging from classic typewriter sound, beeps, boops, etc.

Double-click ClickKey.exe, set the volume for the sound, and you are ready. Changing the volume won't affect the global volume, so you can change it to any level without worrying if your Winamp sound gets affected. If you simply want to add the classic typewriter sound, then there will be no tweak you have to perform, but if you want to utilize all of this program features, then you should read the detailed guide on the developer's homepage.



The advanced features include associating its program with your own shortcut key to launch or disable it at a press of a key, adding your own sound for the computer keyboard strokes, making it automatically run every time Windows is started, and so on.

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Youtube is probably the largest video sharing site at this moment due to the many videos that have been uploaded to the site. This motivates a large number of software developers to build a specific software to download Youtube videos easily. While many of them are just the same features packed within different skins, a few shows up with unique capabilities in their efforts to win the competition.

So, it seems that everywhere we could find another new Youtube video downloaders. The great news is most of them are free. I haven't found a portable Youtube video downloader, but I'm sure it exists somewhere. While a portable version could be a solution for you who hesitate to install more software on your computer, you can choose to use an online downloader instead. Some people prefer this way because they don't have to download anything. Simply open the site, copy the url of the videos, and start the download. While there are many online video downloaders, I regularly use keepvid. How about you?

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