Help - dead zip files

[(RIP) Kaister]

I've got a home burned cd with some photo's on it.
On the disc are 4 large ( 4mb ) zip file that also have photo's inside them.

Problem is - i'm getting a corrupt or damaged file error message when i try to open them

Any ideas how to get these out ??

 

[Sherringford Hovis]

Ye olde version of PKZIP had a repair program that came with it to allegedly fix dmagaed zip file. Have no idea if Winzip has a similar tool. have you tried looking on winzip.co, to see if they have a faq?

 

[cookie]

you might find winrar has more success. some people think it is a better prog than winzip & it will decompress winzip files.

edit: google just found this

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

cheers guys - but no repair in pkzip - winrar doesn't work - nor does zip repair.

they show a size though, so something's going in there.

 

[Kropotkin]

cheers guys - but no repair in pkzip - winrar doesn't work - nor does zip repair.

they show a size though, so something's going in there.

Bad news, I'm afraid, they are probably corrupt and useless. One way to check is to open them in a text editor (my personal favourite is Textpad), and see if you can see the image filenames in there. The zip files should start with the word PK, followed by a bunch of gibberish, with the filenames very close to the end.

If you can't see the filenames, then the zip files weren't fully compressed when you copied them to be burned on the CD.

David

 

[mikeh501]

I have never found that there is any point zipping JPEGS anyway, because they are already compressed.

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

thanks - i'll remember that , then.

next time somebody gives me a cd with uncompressed zip files on - i'll use my little laser eye and declare that he's wasted his time, my time , and valuable world resources by trying to zip up jpegs that are already compressed.

You're very smart - you even knew they were jpegs ? They could have been RAW files, how did you know that ?

Can you do world peace too ?

 

[cookie]

i now have this zip repair utility. it's a paid for one so may just work better.

if you can be bothered, try the demo to see if it can repair the file, if it does, you will need a registered version so PM me

 

[Sherringford Hovis]

They may have been TIFF files and uncompressed!

Is it me or is there a virus affecting anyone with Staffordshire in their address, so that they seem to be less than civil today - 24/8/04?

This one, the poxy FF50 thread.....


PKZIPFIX comes with PKZIP as part of the package along with surprisingly, PKUNZIP...... I'll see if we have a copy here....

 

[mikeh501]

I am endowed with a psychic ability.... or perhaps it was a educated guess.

It must be a 99% probability that photos are going to be JPEG's, but point taken, a RAW file would have been a distinct possiblity

And whats all this about people from Staffs - take a chill pill


Edit: As I'm an unhelpfull steward, I have just been on the net and got a URL for ya ZIP Repair

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

nope - even the 'advanced zip repair' failed to work.

This is a bummer .

I took the photos myself and have seen them before off the very cd i have now - and the cd is in good condition.

I'm stumped

 

[Sherringford Hovis]

I've got PKZIPFIX.EXE, it runs in a dos window I can get the exe off the old pc in a school but not until tomorrow when the admin officer is there....

 

[Fanum]

Phil.......what OS are you using????

Only asking 'cos XP can do some very odd things, including allowing you to view zipped files without decompressing them......and I also had a compressed bacjk-up disc that had a home made film on it......I put the disc into the drive to look which backup it was and the bugger started running

 

[cookie]

doesn't XP just decompress them on the fly?

 

[Fanum]

Quite possibly.....just wondering if it was worth a go looking at his CD on an XP machine if he's on some other OS.

 

[Clive]

Have you tried using one of the available CDR recovery utilities to recovery/extract them to HD before trying to zip repair ?

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

Using XP pro - no worries there.

I can and have copied the zip files to hard drive , then tried to extract them - rather than do it on cdr - so its not the cdr or the operating system.