I recently downloaded two drivers for 98se and they both were saved as zip files.

If I right click on each and go to properties I see a difference between the two even though they are for the same item... a SiS sound card.

One has a check mark for Archive within the Attributes area in properties and the other does not have any check marks.

What does this mean?

I don't think that you need to worry about the properties. If it's a concern, use the one with the archive attribute.

If you click Start\Run and type winfile, you'll see the old file manager program and all saved programs have an "a" mark for 'archive.'

Properties can be changed for each file to hide files or designate files as read-only (r) or system files (s) or and combination. An rhsa would designate a read-only, hidden, system, archive file.

Files label 'r' or 's' will have a warning screen before deletion is allowed. It is a way to protect your important files from accidental deletion. The workaround is to change the attributes.