Do not download large corrupted files again, Fix them with

[rajas700]

Do not download large corrupted files again, Fix them with WinHex & Curl:



Bug in the download manager.
Bad proxy server.
Bad web server.
Problems with your own computer.

Re-downloading corrupted files, specially those sized over 500 MB are really painful for most of us. And there is no guarantee that the re-downloaded file will be free of corruption as far as you are using the same configuration.

In such cases, its best to fix them manually instead of downloading again. The whole process is very simple, but requries enough concentration. Once you have mastered it, you will never have to worry about corrupted files.

Tools Required:

WinHex _http://www.winhex.com/winhex.zip
CURL _http://curl.haxx.se/latest.cgi?curl=win32-nossl-sspi
CommonSenseâ„¢ (I don't have any link for this one)

Steps required in brief:

Make a backup copy of the corrupted file and open it with WinHex.

Identify corrupted segments. Large sequences of zeros are all we have to search for in most cases.

Re-download the corrupted segments with CURL.

Write the retrieved data on appropiate offsets.

Step-by-step example:

Let us assume that we have a corrupted file named corrupted.rar. We open it WinHex, and do the following things:

Switch the offset representation from hex to decimal by clicking once on the offset area.






Now we search for corrupted segments. Most of the time they will be sequences of zeros. As we can see from the first bytes of the opened file, it's a rar file. Files we download over the Internet are mostly compressed formats. By design, a fresh file should not contain sequences of zeros or other repeating bytes after the header part. So, we scroll a few pages down.





Now we start searching for such sequences with CTRL+ALT+F.





The search takes us to a place where we can see some zeros and repeating bytes. Surely this is one of the corrupted segments.





So, now we have to download the missing data using CURL. It's always a good idea to retrieve the data with some margin. In our case, we get the bytes from 01094304 to 01094512 in order to cover the screenshot size. In real case it should be even higher. So, we start command prompt and issue the command "curl -r 1094304-1094512 _http://badserver.com/mygoodfile.rar -o 01094304.bin" to download the mentioned segment of the original file, and save it to a file named 01094304.bin. For details, curl manual can help. After it's done, curl will terminate and we will have our file 01094304.bin right inside CURL's folder.





Now we open the downloaded segment 01094304.bin with WinHex.
Copy the whole file with CTRL+A -> CTRL+C.





Switch back to our corrupted file and go to the starting offset of our retrieved segment. CTRL+G -> 01094304




Now press CTRL+B to write the copied data over this offset. It is very important to determine correct offset. One offset left or right can ruin everything. Our retrieved segment starts with 18 1E BD 3D, and the offset we are going to write here also starts with 18 1E BD 3D.




After we are done, we save the file using CTRL+S. For larger files, it is better to switch the edit mode to in-place mode. F6 -> In-place mode.
Now we can see that the corrupted part has been filled with original data, and it's fixed. In this example we had only of such segment. But in real cases, there might be several segments like this. In that case the whole procedure is to be repeated for each corrupted segment. Also note that, the length of zero sequences to find for can be chosen to be smaller or larger than the length used here.



TRY IT....

[[lokesh]]

Great tut man!... thanks ! I got frustrated many times due to this. That will really help out many.

P.S. : A small software can be made for the steps you mentioned using vb or any such. It will be much more easier to fix them. I too willl try on it.

[sms_solver]

i would like to try your tutorial but I don't have any corrupted zip or rar files

[upendra_gp]

if we can fix them with this tools then why cant we just get its all data with curl and create the file?

[ax3]

CURL _http://curl.haxx.se/latest.cgi?curl=win32-nossl-sspi


hey rajas this link not opening ...


as i have a couple of bad or corrupted zip files ...

[anandk]

useful tut, thnx man !

[coolendra]

happened to me ao many times
is it legal to fix it urself ?
thanx lot dude

[__Virus__]

OMG best thing i have ever gotten accross

[paul_007]

thnx rajas700
this is da best tut i have ever seen

here is da workin link 4 CURL

http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.15.1.zip

[allmighty]

if this thing works it should be made sticky or entered in the sticky post for further reference.

[U2]

hey this thing is copied from devil board

[catch_maxi]

Buddy Thanks For Ur Grest Post

[wizrulz]

Originally Posted by U2

hey this thing is copied from devil board

I thought this dude rajas700 has great brain to work this out and explain to us members, but if its copied then please do give the credit in ur post



PS- this rajas700 has 600 od posts to his name means had been member for long time and also knows the rule sof forum......he has a banned tagged.....may be broken rules.....but y do old members do break the rules? :roll:

[Darthvader]

@wiz rulz : dont u see that he has joined the same time as u and me and has 600 posts when we .....
DOesnt thiz tell u somethnn.....

Srry if i am rude or strayed off the topic

[gary4gar]

hey,
inst it a bit techical.no easy way to do it.

Nice tut!

[mario_pant]

this TUT rox!
thanks
m_p
:mann.. i hate this limit

[mariner]

goos post buddy. very informative.its a must try.

[Dharmil]

Works great for my 100 mb download file
Just some instructions :
After you have downloaded curl from the link extract it to windows\system32 and in start=> run=> curl -r 1094304-1094512 http://badserver.com/mygoodfile.rar -o 01094304.bin . In orginial post there is underscore (_) here : 1094512 _http but it works without underscore

[TechGuru#1]

what happens when the source u r dlodng from is itself corrupted ?