"not a rar file"

[tomswiftx]

I've downloaded a number of apps that come across as .zip with .rar inside.

When I try to unrar, I get the "this is not a valid rar file and can't be opened.

I this a damaged file or is it bogus?

Thanks.

[krosis]

Could be lots of things. A bad torrent (damaged or bogus) or it could be you're having issues during download, do a force re-check to make sure it completed everything properly. You also could have bad sectors and it is getting downloaded onto a bad spot of your hard drive corrupting it.

[NIK]

99.99% of the time an archive within an archive is bogus.

If it's a torrent you downloaded from TPB, post the link of the page you downloaded it from in the Report Torrents forum and we'll check it / delete it so that nobody else is fooled.

[tomswiftx]

99.99% of the time an archive within an archive is bogus.

If it's a torrent you downloaded from TPB, post the link of the page you downloaded it from in the Report Torrents forum and we'll check it / delete it so that nobody else is fooled.

Thanks. This was from Torrentday, but I have had the same issue on TPB in the past.

This is the torrent that had rar withing a zip and didn't open: Tree v1 9 2 Bilingual MacOSX Retail-CORE http://www.torrentday.com/details.php?id=731246. There are two or more other versions of the same program that I can't open.

[NIK]

Well, nothing we can do about that but they should have a reporting mechanism too.

[Totenkruez]

99.99% of the time an archive within an archive is bogus.

If it's a torrent you downloaded from TPB, post the link of the page you downloaded it from in the Report Torrents forum and we'll check it / delete it so that nobody else is fooled.

Thanks. This was from Torrentday, but I have had the same issue on TPB in the past.

This is the torrent that had rar withing a zip and didn't open: Tree v1 9 2 Bilingual MacOSX Retail-CORE http://www.torrentday.com/details.php?id=731246. There are two or more other versions of the same program that I can't open.

You might have an untouched 0-day scene release. CORE is a release group that often does those type of releases. Private torrent sites, such as the one you linked, usually offer the releases unmodified; most of the stuff on TPB are pre-extracted before being uploaded. In their untouched form, 0-days are double-packed, with the RAR archives each packed into an individual ZIP archive. If you still have the files, make sure you've fully downloaded the contents (some torrent clients don't have settings to mark incomplete files as such) and extracted each of the RAR archives from all of the ZIP archives; there should be one RAR for each ZIP. You should be able to extract the files if you have all the RAR files out.

The other thing to note is that the recently released WinRAR 5 introduced a new RAR format. It uses the same old RAR extension but is not backwards compatible with older versions. I don't think "scene" has updated to WinRAR 5 yet, but assuming the file you grabbed was indeed valid (fakes are less common on private torrent sites), you might be getting that error from using a program that can't extract the new RAR format.

[-nelly-]

The other thing to note is that the recently released WinRAR 5 introduced a new RAR format. It uses the same old RAR extension but is not backwards compatible with older versions. I don't think "scene" has updated to WinRAR 5 yet, but assuming the file you grabbed was indeed valid (fakes are less common on private torrent sites), you might be getting that error from using a program that can't extract the new RAR format.

My thoughts exactly. Here's the extracted archive of the torrent:

[tomswiftx]

The other thing to note is that the recently released WinRAR 5 introduced a new RAR format. It uses the same old RAR extension but is not backwards compatible with older versions. I don't think "scene" has updated to WinRAR 5 yet, but assuming the file you grabbed was indeed valid (fakes are less common on private torrent sites), you might be getting that error from using a program that can't extract the new RAR format.

My thoughts exactly. Here's the extracted archive of the torrent:

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I was able to get the rars to unpack by double clicking them multiple times or something like that. Would it have an bearing that I am on a Mac? I tried all the mac unarchive apps I could find.