How WinRAR Destroyed My System, A Fair Warning To You All.

Prepare yourselves, cause you are about to hear one of the most horrific stories in your life, ok, may not that much, but still scared the daylights out of me :cry:

So there I was, one fine morning, with a cup of coffee, browsing through usual 4chan cr@p(/b/), when all of a sudden my explorer(windows) hung, I thought WTF? This is a mean machine, with an updated OS, no virus, so what? :-?

Anyway not to worry(I had full backup) I went to find a solution, restarted explorer, nothing, taskmanager showed 20% cpu utilization of explorer and it was stuck, felt weird, restart, same thing, now I was getting pi$$ed off, safe mode, nothing, now I felt concerned, since explorer was not accessible, I was accessing programs thorough task manager(run->browse) :evil:

So I went to find the issue, stopped all programs, nothing, killed all the context handlers, nothing, tried web, no proper solutions came, sfc/scannow, nothing, finally system restore, I felt safe, for 5 mins, it was back, now I was tired and wanted to give up

But then I started thinking WTH was I doing last, turned out I was using winrar to archive some files, small file, 60mb total, nothing lit up in my mind, without explorer the system was running absolutely ok, I could do anything, the system passed all hardware tests fine

SO??

ProcessExplorer revealed that the thread SHLWAPI.dll(under explorer process) was the issue, dump revealed nothing, google gave nothing. Killing the thread didn't fix it

And I was damn sure it wasn't a virus.

Right then I was about to give up and reinstall windows, when I accidentally clicked the Winrar's up button(Winrar was open as I was downloading a bunch of tools from web) and reached desktop, and I saw 24000 rar files on desktop, yes, 24k, so explorer was trying to display them, and fu(ked up

So I went to investigate the issue, found out that by default the segmentaion unit in WinRAR is B for bytes, yes bytes, I was trying to split the 60MB file into two parts, but instead I made 60000000/25 segments, windows crashed before we got there anyway, but 24k files was enough :lol:

What I did:
*i.imgur.com/0TGly.png

I deleted the files through winrar(they were not showing under any tools that used standard windows api to access files as those files were not visible under explorer,so I couldn't see them under task managers->run, browse menu), and it was fixed.

So guys, learn from my lesson, be careful with WinRAR, and you can use this method to screw your friends PC if you like, no long term damage, you could just erase the files with winrar or other non standard tools, or command prompt.

^ Hah, I remember something like that happened to me as well. Killed the WinRAR process right away as soon as I noticed it spouting files by the dozen.

I use 7-ZIP now.

Kl@w-24 said:
^ Hah, I remember something like that happened to me as well. Killed the WinRAR process right away as soon as I noticed it spouting files by the dozen.

I use 7-ZIP now.

Since my files were 25bytes each, and I have a 2600k, it spawned close to 10k files per sec before it hanged, too little to late, I also use 7zip, but I was sending the files to my cousin, so used winrar.

How can this be WinRAR's fault? :-?

it was doing what you asked for.. :-?

RCuber said:
How can this be WinRAR's fault? it was doing what you asked for..

Well, default file segmentation is bytes(look at pic above), BYTES, when was the last time you saw rar part files in BYTES? It should have been MB. Plus why not provide a warning, a freaking web browser shows warning when creating a large no of tabs, the first time, as I was about to create 2400000, i.e 2.4million rar files it should have warned us, a total windows installation directory does not contain that many files.

tkin said:
Well, default file segmentation is bytes(look at pic above), BYTES, when was the last time you saw rar part files in BYTES? It should have been MB. Plus why not provide a warning, a freaking web browser shows warning when creating a large no of tabs, the first time, as I was about to create 2400000, i.e 2.4million rar files it should have warned us, a total windows installation directory does not contain that many files.

ok. I checked winRAR interface.. the default is Bytes, but the drop down menu text is blank but on clicking the dropdown you can see there are different size predefined..

yes its a blunder by WinRAR, but you could have been a little bit more careful and checked the target split size before you started the archiving process

M

Use older version of WinRAR and be happy

*i.imgur.com/w3KNZ.png

I am using 4.00 (x64): Download WinRAR for Windows | Old Version.com

compression settings...no blame to winrar
this can be replicated in other compression softwares also...

RCuber said:
ok. I checked winRAR interface.. the default is Bytes, but the drop down menu text is blank but on clicking the dropdown you can see there are different size predefined..

yes its a blunder by WinRAR, but you could have been a little bit more careful and checked the target split size before you started the archiving process

See the problem? I know about the dropdown list, I expected default to be in MB, I mean bytes? Really? Not even a text file will fit.

Thats why you should not blindly click on Ok and Next.

This fits:

A computer does what you TELL it to do, not what you WANT it to do."

I remember I had a folder full of images pulled out from lmao pics. Explorer just stuck after more than half way scrolling, no preview of images...nothing. I couldn't kill explorer process too. Restarted and never went back to that folder, probably list view ill be good.

xtremevicky said:
Thats why you should not blindly click on Ok and Next.

It was 7 in the morning.

It's more of a Windows: Gone beyond limits quickly.

tkin said:
It was 7 in the morning.

That's why you shouldn't click ok and next at 7 in the morning.

just browse /gif/

:razz:

^^ Or /hc/ :lol:

I did similar thing once, but it created only some 1k or 2k files but I was fast enough to close it before it could finish.

mrintech said:
Use older version of WinRAR and be happy

*i.imgur.com/w3KNZ.png

I am using 4.00 (x64): Download WinRAR for Windows | Old Version.com

3.90 here

Noob..always "look" before u click :\

S

I fail to see how WinRAR hasn't destroyed my 8 year old PC, another 3 year old PC!
Guess I know B and b..quite well!
WinRAR is only a bot, rather rename the title how I accidentally screwed up my system!

Its your fault!!!

WinRar >> 7-zip (I just prefer it for "recovery record").

Topic title should be : "How I accidently destroyed my system using Winrar."

Your fault!

I use 7-zip.

All this makes one think so hard. All the details that OP keyed makes one wonder. Which Coffee that morning was he exactly having ?

7-zip user here. And yeah, I did what OP did once. Learned quickly.Rectified. Not WinRAR's fault.
Sadly 7-zip lacks the "Installer Maker".

freshseasons said:
All this makes one think so hard. All the details that OP keyed makes one wonder. Which Coffee that morning was he exactly having ?

coffee with a specific kind of "sugar"

freshseasons said:
All this makes one think so hard. All the details that OP keyed makes one wonder. Which Coffee that morning was he exactly having ?

Actually the previous night I was drunk to the brim, so had a massive hangover, plus two cups of strong coffee

tkin said:
Actually the previous night I was drunk to the brim, so had a massive hangover, plus two cups of strong coffee

that explains a lot

The title of this thread sounded like OP's system got fried for real or something!

Btw.. I won't consider WinRAR fault here. After all, the first theory of computers I learned in my childhood (and probably everyone must have learned) was the lesson of GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out. :rofl:

tkin said:
Prepare yourselves, cause you are about to hear one of the most horrific stories in your life, ok, may not that much, but still scared the daylights out of me

So there I was, one fine morning, with a cup of coffee, browsing through usual 4chan cr@p(/b/), when all of a sudden my explorer(windows) hung, I thought WTF? This is a mean machine, with an updated OS, no virus, so what?

Anyway not to worry(I had full backup) I went to find a solution, restarted explorer, nothing, taskmanager showed 20% cpu utilization of explorer and it was stuck, felt weird, restart, same thing, now I was getting pi$$ed off, safe mode, nothing, now I felt concerned, since explorer was not accessible, I was accessing programs thorough task manager(run->browse)

So I went to find the issue, stopped all programs, nothing, killed all the context handlers, nothing, tried web, no proper solutions came, sfc/scannow, nothing, finally system restore, I felt safe, for 5 mins, it was back, now I was tired and wanted to give up

But then I started thinking WTH was I doing last, turned out I was using winrar to archive some files, small file, 60mb total, nothing lit up in my mind, without explorer the system was running absolutely ok, I could do anything, the system passed all hardware tests fine

SO??

ProcessExplorer revealed that the thread SHLWAPI.dll(under explorer process) was the issue, dump revealed nothing, google gave nothing. Killing the thread didn't fix it

And I was damn sure it wasn't a virus.

Right then I was about to give up and reinstall windows, when I accidentally clicked the Winrar's up button(Winrar was open as I was downloading a bunch of tools from web) and reached desktop, and I saw 24000 rar files on desktop, yes, 24k, so explorer was trying to display them, and fu(ked up

So I went to investigate the issue, found out that by default the segmentaion unit in WinRAR is B for bytes, yes bytes, I was trying to split the 60MB file into two parts, but instead I made 60000000/25 segments, windows crashed before we got there anyway, but 24k files was enough

What I did:
*i.imgur.com/0TGly.png

I deleted the files through winrar(they were not showing under any tools that used standard windows api to access files as those files were not visible under explorer,so I couldn't see them under task managers->run, browse menu), and it was fixed.

So guys, learn from my lesson, be careful with WinRAR, and you can use this method to screw your friends PC if you like, no long term damage, you could just erase the files with winrar or other non standard tools, or command prompt.

thanks for the info..

RCuber said:
tkin said:

Actually the previous night I was drunk to the brim, so had a massive hangover, plus two cups of strong coffee

Click to expand...

that explains a lot

Not to mention /b/. Seriously it was 7 in the morning ! XD