A while back I wrote a tutorial on how to
right-click to extract a
.rar archive in Windows 2000 & XP.
Every now and then I receive an email asking how to make it work in Vista.
You have three options to accomplish that:
- "Upgrade" to Windows XP
- Install 7-zip which gives you a
full-blown UI
- If you really just want to right-click like in
the other tutorial.. follow the convoluted steps below
Step #1: Download and install the free command line .rar
extractor. Jump over to
http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm
(link opens in new window) and look for something called "UnRAR for
Windows". Download and install it. It will default the installation
folder to "C:\Program
Files\UnRar\".
Step #2: Right-click on a .rar file and select "Open".
This only works if you don't already have an application registered to
handle .rar files.
Step #3: You should receive a message about not being able to
open the file. Choose "Select a program from a list of installed
programs" and hit "OK".
Step #4: Click the "Browse" button on the next dialog.
Step #5: Navigate to the folder where UnRAR was installed
("C:\Program Files\UnRar\" unless you chose something
different).
Step #6: OK, this isn't really a step so much as a rant.. At
this point UnRAR.exe is associated with .rar files, that's good. However
UnRAR.exe takes an additional command-line argument that you need to set
in the Folder Options, that's bad. In
Windows
2000/XP you can go into the Folder Options and set this in about 5
seconds. In Vista they decided to either remove or completely hide this
option. Even running Folder Options as an administrator doesn't show it.
Step #7: So instead of getting a convenient dialog, you now have
to take the
much riskier approach of manually editing the
registry. I suppose you can accidentally do some bad stuff in the old
2000/XP Folder Options dialog.. but it's nothing compared to what you
can do in the registry. Anyway, you can try setting the shell options
for UnRAR.exe but that appears to do nothing.
Step #8: What does work is going to the
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\rar_auto_file\shell\open\command
key and changing it to
"C:\Program Files\Unrar\UnRAR.exe"
e %1. Exactly how it appears below:
Step #9: Try opening the .rar file again and you should get a
nice old-school dialog now.
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