I try to open a rar file, but winrar claims the file is damaged or not a rar file. Is there any utility allowing to identify what type of file is it?? thx thanks santiago

You might be able to open with 7Zip. http://www.7-zip.org/ Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.

A utility? How about Wordpad (no kidding!)? A simple Hex Editor would be preferable, but Wordpad should be good enough for "identification" purposes. "Open" the file. The very first 3-4 characters or so, will identify the file type. I suspect you may find that it will be a Markup Language file...

well, thanks, the file is 700 MB and wordpad or even winvi cannot open it.using xvi32 the first characters are RIFF0___AVI LIST~"__hdlravih8 where the underscore are binary characters, in this sequence A2 BA 2B (between RIFF0 and AVI) and two NULLs (00) between " and h I suspect it could be a picture although I couldn't open with winamp either

RIFF usually indicates a sound file, but certainly not a Rar archive. You're making some headway. Now try opening in Media Player (or whatever alternate you may be using for av media).

Addendum to my previous post - RIFF is a "multimedia wrapper", so in your case (size being 700MB), it may well be "wrapping" an AVI (video)file (as you already noticed). In any case, my suggestion to open in whatever AV program you have (like Windows MediaPlayer) still stands. Then, if/when it works for you, change (rename) the extension from RAR to AVI, then just open normally, as you would any other AVI file.

It sounds like you have downloaded a movie file. To reduce the size they have compressed the RIFF? by using winrar. If winrar says its corrupt, that I suspect is the problem, until you can uncompress it, I don't think you will be able to see the file. Have you tried to open the rar file with 7zip like I suggested. If you can't then it is probably corrupt. If you can, do a google for the file extension to see how to create the avi file. http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/... If you can open the rar, this site might be able to help http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.