File Extraction

Archives

Archives are set of files put together in one archive, this allows them to be downloaded as one file, and extracted on your PC.  This saves downloading a lot of files.  Many archives are also compressed, meaning its a smaller download than downloading each file separately.  Many downloads come as archives for yours and the author's convenience.

.EXE - Self Extracting Archives

For a slightly bigger file, the author can made the archive an executable file with all the things on one file needed to extract the file, they also can set things such as where each file should go on the user's system.  There are by far the easiest to deal with.

When you encounter such a screen as this, all you need to do is press "Setup" or "Extract".  If the option is to Extract, and not Setup, you will need to go to the folder you chose to extract to (or to where it tells you) and run the programs from there.

Choosing a Folder

For the initial download of the file, a good place is the "my documents" folder, or your desktop.  These are places to remember to run the files from.
When extracting files without a setup, a good place for programs is "c:\windows\program files\".
For other files, maybe picture collections, or text files, send to the appropriate place, such as "My Documents".

.Zip .Rar .Ace .Tar(.gz) - Manual Extraction
.zip is the most common of these.  These files need to be extracted by a program, of which here is a few:
WinZip - 30 Day Trial
Power Archiver - Shareware (Versions before 7.0 are free/ad supported)
WinRar - 30 Day Trial
Windows XP comes with its own extraction utility
Never run a file and/or program from within an archiving utility, it will fail to work properly.

Using a Third Party Archiving Utility such as Winzip
(1) Double click the archive file, or file>>open archive from within the archiver.
(2) Don't select a file, unless its a collection of files which you are just choosing a few, in which case select the files you wish to extract.
(3) Select the "Extract" Button on the toolbar.
(4) In the new windows, select an appropriate place to extract to.
(5) Close the archiver, go to the folder where you extracted the files to, and run them!

Windows XP Archiving Utility

This is a nice utility that prevents you from running files with dependencies from within the zip file.  It also uses an easy to understand wizard to extract files.
(1) Double click the archive file.
(2) Select "Extract all files"
(3) Do as the wizard says, when it comes to an end, it will offer to place you within the folder, accept and run the files!