Have you ever tried to extract an archive with WinRAR and run into a checksum error? This error usually appears when something is wrong with the archive file.
Fortunately, there are several troubleshooting methods you can try to get rid of the checksum error in WinRAR. Read on for the details.
1. Enable the Keep Broken Files option
By default, WinRAR automatically deletes damaged parts of your archive. Although this feature usually works well, in some cases it can remove segments that are needed for extraction, which leads to a checksum error.
To fix this, turn on WinRAR's Keep broken files feature, which stops WinRAR from deleting corrupted or faulty files during extraction.
Follow these steps to enable it:
1. Right-click the archive, hover over WinRAR, and select Extract files from the context menu.
2. Check the Keep my files option and click OK.
WinRAR will now extract your archive without removing the damaged or faulty parts from the file. After extraction, you can repair the corrupted files in Windows with any of the various repair tools available on the market.
2. Temporarily disable your security program
Often, the security program on your computer can interfere with WinRAR and cause it to show an error message. This usually happens when the security program believes the archive contains a malicious agent.
In this case, the solution is to temporarily turn off your antivirus program and then extract the file. However, only do this if you trust the archive. If you use the antivirus built into Windows, see our guide on how to temporarily turn off Windows Security.
On the other hand, if you use a third-party security program, right-click its icon in the system tray area and select Disable from the context menu. Once the extraction finishes successfully, turn the security program back on.
Your antivirus software may also delete the extracted files because it treats them as a threat to your computer. To prevent this, add the extracted files to the Windows Security exclusion list. If you use a third-party antivirus program, check its user guide to learn how to add files to its exclusion list.
3. Repair the archive
As mentioned above, the main reason behind the WinRAR checksum error is a corrupted archive. One way to deal with this is to use WinRAR's built-in repair feature to fix damaged Windows files. The repair feature looks for errors in the archive and fixes them automatically with its own repair mechanism.
Follow these steps to repair your archive:
1. Right-click your archive, hover over WinRAR, and select the Open with WinRAR option.
2. Click the Tools tab at the top and select the Repair archive option from the context menu.
3. Select the Treat the corrupt archive as RAR option if your archive is a RAR file. Select the Treat the corrupt archive as ZIP option if it is a ZIP file. Then click OK.
The WinRAR repair window will appear and try to repair the archive. When the process finishes, restart your computer, try extracting the file again, and check whether the error comes back. If it does, try the next solution on the list.
4. Run a CHKDSK scan
Another major cause of the error message can be bad sectors on your hard drive. To deal with this, you can run a CHKDSK scan.
CHKDSK, short for Check Disk, is a utility that scans your hard drive for bad sectors, missing file metadata, and incorrect file types and sizes. If it detects any problems, it will try to repair them automatically.
5. Download the archive again
If you keep getting errors while extracting the file, something may have gone wrong during the download. You may have lost your Internet connection while downloading the file, or your computer may have suddenly lost power.
In this case, the best course of action is to download the archive again. If someone emailed you the file, ask them to send it again. If you downloaded the file from a website, go back to that site and start a fresh download.
6. Try a different extraction tool
If you still get the checksum error even after trying the earlier troubleshooting steps, the problem may lie with WinRAR rather than the archive. In that case, you have no choice but to use another extraction tool to extract your archive.
Source: Quản Trị Mạng
