The first thing you need to understand is that .rar files are not multimedia files, so you usually can't play them right away.
A RAR file is an archive, just like .zip or .tar, that can contain one or more compressed files. You can "extract" those files from the .rar archive and play them in your favorite music/video player.
Extracting And Playing RAR Files
The most popular software for extracting RAR files is WinRAR, a shareware application (see the bottom of this article for free alternatives). If you have WinRar installed, you can play .rar files by performing these steps :
1. Right-click the file in question.
2. Choose "Extract Here". This will put all the contents of the archive file in the same folder as the .rar file.
3. Locate the multimedia files created (.avi, .mpg, .mp3 or similar) and double-click to play.
Special Case : Partial Downloads
Sometimes a video file is split among many smaller RAR files. If you have all the parts you can play it as described above, but what if some files are missing or "broken"? You can still play at least part of the video. To preview the video, follow these steps :
1. Locate the first of the .rar files. Depending on the version of WinRAR used to create them, the first file will either have "part1" in it's name, or it will be the only file with the ".rar" extension (other files will have extensions like ".r01", ".r02" and so on).
2. Right-click the file and choose "Extract Files…". A dialog box will appear.
3. Tick the checkbox that says "Keep broken files" (it's in the lower left corner).
4. Click OK and wait while the files are decompressed. Eventually an error message will come up, click Cancel.
5. Now you have a video file that you can play in any video player that can handle broken files. Windows Media Player isn't always able to do this - I personally recommend the free VLC media player for this task. You can download it from www.videolan.org
Here's an extra tip - sometimes the VLC player can play RAR files right away, without extracting them first. This depends on the video codec and the compression algorithm used, so it may not work in certain cases.
This article about how to play .rar files was brought to you by Janis Elsts, an experienced computer programmer. Janis has also put together a list of free RAR extractor applications that you can use to extract .rar files.
Comments on How To Play RAR Files
thank you so much
You made it so much easier…Thank you!
use Dziobas rar player!!! it will play media without unpacking…much easier!
peace
dok
I need help with torrent files that i have downloaded, rar files, using utorrent. I extracted them now i'm stuck. How do i play my games now? I think this is really simple i just can't figure it out. please help
I can be anywhere else, outside a McDonalds, a hotel, whatever and get online but when I go home Im online for about 2 minutes and the web drops off. I use vista as my OS and it says Im still online, but I get nothing. HELP
thanx
Les
hey im new to the downloading game and dont know much but i have a question what can this player do for me cause my computer is telling me that i need a file to put it in what kinda of file do i need just a plain old folder? @xdoktor:
SIC GUY
i have dowloaded cricket through torrent and before i extract it requires a password..how would i get the password
@xdoktor:
Great program. But does it excist for games aswell? Cause I have downloaded a lot of games in .rar files and no iso shows up if I extract the file in winRAR or BitZipper. I have no idea how to play the games then…