Sciencemadness Discussion Board

7-zip Problem

Sauron - 8-7-2008 at 01:27

I installed this archiver in order to unpack Chem Rev from MadHatter.

The installer gives no options as to language. As I am in Thailand the installer apprently decided I must be Thai so that's the language it selected.

Unfortunately my Thai isn't up to using the menu. And I can't figure how to get to an English configuration.

I have been all through the menu with my Thai spouse and she sees nothing about changing language either.

The Help file was more of an UnHelp file.

This program really ought to default to English with options for localization from there.

Anything else is a crock.

[Edited on 8-7-2008 by Sauron]

enhzflep - 8-7-2008 at 03:58

It's easy to change the language (when you've the luxury of reading it in your native tongue).
You can do it via the menu.

1) "Tools" menu (2nd last menu item on bar across top)
2) "Options" menu item (1st item)
3) "Language" tab (5th tab)
4) Pick your language of choice.

But if this is no good, just ask 7zip for a refund. :P

[EDIT]: Failing that, why not just fix it in the registry?

Copy the following text to a file with the extension reg, then double-click it. (Or simply enter the information into regedit manually)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.0

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\7-Zip]
"Lang"="en"
-----------------------------------------------------------

[Edited on 8-7-2008 by enhzflep]

not_important - 8-7-2008 at 05:42

Just noting the the "Language" tab is also the rightmost tab, besides being the 5th one.

Sauron - 8-7-2008 at 06:01

Thanks much. I now have 7-zip in English (and did not need to use regedit.)

However, all attempts to open or extract archive (just one of them for testing) have failed, despite entering the correct password in the Extract dialog box.

I am about to resign myself to not having Chem Rev locally. This is torture. It takes a long time to download these 48 Mb files and there are about 50 of them in all. And when I get one, it won't open. What is wrong?

I am suspecting this is a giant 40-something part spanned archive that cannot be opened/extracted till all the component files are present. If so the person who uploaded this is a sadist. I for one can live without it.

[Edited on 8-7-2008 by Sauron]

franklyn - 8-7-2008 at 06:28

Quote:
Originally posted by Sauron

This program really ought to default to English with options for localization from there.

Anything else is a crock.


No not really, the notion that english is the default lingua franca is true enough
but it is chauvinism to suppose that option must be the default installation in
an eastern country. Some blame goes to the authors who did not anticipate
your predicament. The option to preselect a language should be in evidence
during the install procedure providing you first select the manual or custom
install option. You then have to choose where the files are to be put and other
choices not available if you choose automatic install. A general rule for new
installations is to provide yourself with a roll back point using the system restore
option in WinXP should you need to uninstall due to problems encountered.
Another option is the Erunt utility see here _ http://www.winxptutor.com/regback.htm

P.S.
As a rule I never have more than one zip utility installed. The tendency to
co-opt the previous settings is assured with a default installation. Then
you will experience nightmarish configuration problems and issues with file
associations as two utilities fight for supremacy of your computer, consider
yourself warned.

.

Sauron - 8-7-2008 at 06:36

So I'm a chauvinist. So is that news?

Seriously, there ought to simply be a language selection in the installation routine. That is the norm for multilingual software. My OS is set up for English-Thai switchably, and rarely so I switch to Thai. I assume that the flag was set for Thai based on IP address when I downloaded the installer. But 7-zip.org's website is in English, not Russian or Urdo or Bantu. So for them to have an English website offering a download, making no mention of language option and then defaulting to Thai is just as illogical.

Polverone - 8-7-2008 at 09:36

Quote:
Originally posted by Sauron
I am suspecting this is a giant 40-something part spanned archive that cannot be opened/extracted till all the component files are present. If so the person who uploaded this is a sadist. I for one can live without it.

It is a spanned archive. Oddly, it appears that the graphical 7zip client throws an error when you try to test a component file from the incomplete spanned archive, but the command line client verifies that the file is ok. The MD5 hashes found in MD5SUMS.txt will verify the integrity of the files even if 7zip initially says otherwise.

It takes a bit less than 30 minutes for me to download one of the file parts from MadHatter's site. A couple days of downloading seems like a small price to pay for decades of Chem Rev. Of course downloads may be slower for you, since you're far outside the US.

EDIT: If you want to verify that the 7zip software is working, try downloading indexmaterial.7z and opening that. It should be much faster to download than all the multiple parts.

[Edited on 7-8-2008 by Polverone]

Sauron - 8-7-2008 at 10:15

Oh, agreed that a couple days downloading is a small price to pay. But I'm a veteran of many many huge downloads from MadHatter. None of them put me through this much aggravation. Well, sorting out which versions of PATR 2700 worked and which didn't came close.

This time the aggro is entirely inflicted by the benefactor's choice of archiver. And his electing to span 2.5 Gb rather than putting out files a few volumes at a time like has been done many times before with other journals. I trust that this kvetch does not lessen the genuine appreciation I feel for whoever did this, for his efforts. However, he did make it a genuine pain in the ass to unpack.

If franklyn is right then one needs to uninstall winzip and winrar before installing 7zip. Another hoop to leap through. Why?

alter - 8-7-2008 at 11:09

Quote:
Originally posted by Sauron
Oh, agreed that a couple days downloading is a small price to pay. But I'm a veteran of many many huge downloads from MadHatter. None of them put me through this much aggravation. Well, sorting out which versions of PATR 2700 worked and which didn't came close.

This time the aggro is entirely inflicted by the benefactor's choice of archiver. And his electing to span 2.5 Gb rather than putting out files a few volumes at a time like has been done many times before with other journals. I trust that this kvetch does not lessen the genuine appreciation I feel for whoever did this, for his efforts. However, he did make it a genuine pain in the ass to unpack.

If franklyn is right then one needs to uninstall winzip and winrar before installing 7zip. Another hoop to leap through. Why?


Uploading is slow. Solid archive improves compression. 7zip gives best compression. Saving even few % on gigabytes is many hours saved on uploads. 7zip can run with other archivers, just dont assign it to handle anything but 7z type.

It was hard to get all articles. It would be more work to share them by one year at a time and I would be paid same nothing.

Sauron - 8-7-2008 at 11:54

My installation is set to deal only with 7z files.

Sauron - 9-7-2008 at 09:45

All right, I spent the 2 days downloading 44 7z files of 48 Mb each and a few ancillary files and I just unpacked this huge spanned file using EXTRACT in the File Manager. It created a folder which contains 95 empty folders numbered 1-95 and a multitude of cr.... pdf files.

So my frustration with the archive program was unfounded. It seems to have worked.

I am a wee bit puzzled by the emptry folders. Are these supposed to be Chem Rev volumes? How to sort the files into the corresponding folders? Manually? Or was there a command in 7zip I was supposed to employ?

I remain delighted but confused.

Sauron - 9-7-2008 at 12:21

As no assistance has been forthcoming I am now copying pdf's into the numbered folders volume by volume. Volume I is issues 1-4, Vol.II issues 5-8 and so on. The html TOC files are useful but the links to the PDFs do not work and the amount of work required to fix them manually, egregious, so I won't bother. It may be possible to use Acrobat to repair these links if I assemble the volumes into a binder.

Meanwhile I am downloading J.Med Chem, obviously also uploaded by friend Alter, as it is organized identically. Thanks, alter.

12AX7 - 9-7-2008 at 13:09

Er, how was the TOC layed out? Are you putting them into correct place, or screwing things up more?

Tim

Sauron - 9-7-2008 at 13:54

As I saved a folder as-unpacked, that I have not touched, I can't be "screwing things up more" can I?

At most I can be wasting time.

But, as unpacked by 7zip, the TOCs, whether the first one that was seperate, or the rest that were in an archive, do not work.

By doing what I am doing, and placing toc #x in folder X and copying the pdfs for that volume to same folder, I can easily go to any volume, read the toc and locate the file myself. There are only 3-4 issues per volume and a few papers per issue. The ACS numbering system is clear and familiar. Not a hardship.

I still have the archive, and I still have a spare unpacked folder with everything in it as it came. So no danger of upgefucking.

My intention is to burn the uncompressed pdfs by volume onto a DVD-ROM The TOC is laid out for the thing to be on the desktop. But even there, as it is now while I reorganize it, the TOC links are dead.

The temptation is to compile the toc and the pdfs volume by volume using Acrobat, letting Acrobat repair the links. But as I said, having the files linked from the volume toc is a luxury, not a necessity, when there are only 8-12 files per volume.

I have already done the first 20 volumes this way. It's a lot faster than the damned download.

[Edited on 10-7-2008 by Sauron]

alter - 9-7-2008 at 14:15

You did not unpack archive using file paths I think. PDF should already be in folders.

Create a top folder then move or copy all archive files into it. Unpack archives with paths.

Should see organization like this:

Top level


In folder for volume 93


In folder for volume 93 issue 5


With correct layout u can open index.html and browse any article.

[Edited on 9-7-2008 by alter]

Sauron - 9-7-2008 at 14:25

Thanks again. That will save me a lot of bother.

I appreciate your help.

Sauron - 10-7-2008 at 04:02

I had no problem unpacking the Chem Rev archive with path switch set to Current Path. The resulting folder could be renamed, moved, and copied onto a DVD (I used Nero) without affecting the links from TOCs to PDFs.

I am storing the 7z archive on a second DVD.

Thanks again to alter for sharing these journals.

Sauron - 10-7-2008 at 22:15

I have now downloaded the J Med Chem archive but all attempts to test or unpack archive with 7zip have failed and hang my machine requiring a reboot.

The failures take place at different places in the progress of unpacking or testing each time.

The problem turned out to be not file corruption or software glitches at all. It was just a matter of pc resources vs software demands on them.

I have more than one PC. This one I use for email and Web surfing and downloading. It is not a lame old thing but it is not equal to my shit-hot video editing PC either. The problems were on this machine.

I used a 4 Gb removable drive (Seagate biscuit shaped thingy with USB interface) to move the J Med Chem archive and 7 zip installer to the more powerful machine.

It worked perfectly on that machine first time.

That is after a dozen failures on this one.

Insufficient RAM? Insufficient disk space? Disk too fragmented? CPU not fast enough? It could be any of those or more than one of those. The OS is exactly same.

So heads up: as alter's archives get larger, do not skimp on PC resources. It can make or break the unpacking of an archive.

J Ned Chem now resides on a DVD-R and the archive backup on a second DVD-R. These work fine on both of my machines.

Once again my thanks to alter for his shared archives and his kind assistance.

[Edited on 11-7-2008 by Sauron]

alter - 11-7-2008 at 09:13

Archives were packed with same compression level, should work with same CPU/memory. Might check for RAM error with memtest86+ or similar tool.

Sauron - 11-7-2008 at 09:36

This machine I use for Web and downloading etc is a Pentium 4 3.1 GHz with a 153 Gb HDD and 1 Gb RAM. The HDD is relatively empty.

The video editing machine downstairs is a DuoCore 2.6 if I recall, with 3 Gb RAM and a 325 Gb HDD plus an eSATA-II RAID-0 subsystem (external) of 1 terabyte. The subsytem was left off.

7zip throughput was about 2.5X faster on the latter machine, which processed the JMedChem archive without complaint.

The older machine handled the Chem Rev archive without problem but the J.Med Chem archive hanged while unpacking or even testing on that machine about a dozen times.

Anyway now that archive unpacked and I burned it onto DVD it runs fine on both computers although XP keeps giving me stupid nannyish warnings about active content. I ignore them.

So for future I will unpack using only the more robust machine, or maybe it would be prudent to check RAM and add 1 or 2 more Gb RAM to this one and see if problem goes away.

Thanks again

alter - 11-7-2008 at 11:26

my computer is old, only 512 mb RAM. slow but works ok. thats why I think you have RAM or other computer problem. mine is slower but no trouble.

Sauron - 11-7-2008 at 20:06

I will investigate, thanks.

Meanwhile I checked the HDD. It is 87% free space and I just defragmented it. So those variables are eliminated.

I wonder why the Chem Rev archive did not have same problem?

And I have dealt with multi-Gb downloads before, unpacked no problem with Winzip or WinRAR.

Who knows?

gsd - 9-10-2008 at 23:21

7zip archiver : Some observations

While unpacking the latest archive posted by alter on ftp, I came across a problem with the integrity of the archive which gave error message after partial unpacking. About 55% files were unpacked properly while rest of the files were listed at appropriate place but had no data in it.

It was obvious that this is due to some corrupted downloaded file(s). However the 7z program by itself can not pin-point the corrupted file. the test option only tells you whether the entire archive is OK or not. If it is not then it terminates the testing without pointing at the bad file.

With the help provided by alter, I was able to overcome the problem. The way to go about it is as follows.

download the "md5summer" freeware program from :http://www.md5summer.org/

Execute program for the archive (giving the proper path in the dialog box) by choosing the "verify sums" option. For verification, give the path to the MD5SUMS.txt file provided with the archive.

The program verifies each component file and pinpoints at a bad file(s) - if any.

You will have to re-download these bad files and then retest / unpack the archive.

Hope it helps

gsd

Sauron - 9-10-2008 at 23:59

That is what those checksum files are for.

However, in downloading and unpacking all four of alter's huge archives thusfar, I have not experienced any problems with file corruption. Indeed, the only problems I had were with my own unfamiliarity with 7zip and once these were overcome, with the first archive, I have had no problems of any kind with the other three archives.

7zip is sensitive to RAM integrity and will not run on one of my machines succesfully, which happens to be this one I am posting from. It runs flawlessly, once I do my part properly, on my other machine.

And the unpacked files and folders do indeed run perfectly from DVDs. Chem Rev and J Med Chem, 1 DVD each; J Org Chem and I&EC, two DVDs each. There is no perceptible difference in access time relative to operation from hard disk.

gsd, you are in India and I am in Thailand and neither of us is on a very good internet backbone, are we?