Unlock protected RaR file

Well, the only real solution I can give you is a piece of software that recovers PW's for Archive programs.  If the data is worth recovering, it may cost you.  Here is a piece of software called Advanced Archive Password Recovery.  It can be found here:
http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html#archpr

A registered copy runs $60.00
They do however have a demo version.  So you may be in luck.  Give that program a shot.

Another site that has some reviews about Advanced RAR Password Recovery is located here:
http://www.billssoftwarepicks.com/software/system_utilities/security/Advanced_RAR_Password_Recovery_ElcomSoft_Co-_Ltd-.html

http://www.softpile.com/Utilities/Password_Recovery/Review_01160_index.html

http://www.5star-shareware.com/Utilities/CompressionUtilities/advanced-archive.html

Another piece of software running $99.00
http://www.accessdata.com/Product72_Overview.htm?ItemNum=00



Try those out and let us know!

Something else you can spend money on - www.lostpassword.com
I recently came across a ton of password recovery programs that were apparently free.  I can't remember exactly what I was searching for in Google when I came across these.  I believe it was something like

FREE DATA RECOVERY

There is no known mechanism for extracting a password from a RAR archive and thus a brute force attack is the only way to recover your password.  (This is, of course, assuming that the password isn't something really easily guessable, in which case a dictionary-based brute force attack would be appropriate).

The following free, downloadable utilities will do the job:

RAR Password Cracker:
http://dnsoft.swrus.com/rpc/

CRARK:
http://newdata.box.sk/neworder/crackpwd/crark20.rar

and, as already mentioned in a comment, Advanced RAR Password Recovery:
http://www.elcomsoft.com/arpr.html


Again, if you believe the password to be a word that you'd find in an English dictionary, you'll need a word list.  You can find one here:
http://download.sourceforge.net/wordlist/scowl-4a.zip


I hope this is helpful.

all the dos mode proggies didnt work..........sorry

rxrfrx,

Please read the guidelines on posting comments and proposing answers.  General rule of thumb is to not post an answer unless you are 100% positive you are right, or you were requested to.  Generally if your answer is correct the person whose question you commented on will accept your comment as an answer.

I am 100% positive.  The only way to crack a RAR is to brute-force or dictionary it.  Clearly "bigdg" is being unhelpful; what does "didn't work" mean, anyway?

Well, if it didn't work for him....then that is not 100% correct.  Anyway when you propose an answer it locks up the question.  And no one else will look at it because it puts it in lock status. So even if you are 100% correct for the benefit of everyone don't lock questions up.  Just post your answer as a comment.  And as you say if you are 100% correct and have not posted something that was already stated.  Then they will turn your comment to an answer and grade it as such.

An answer can be correct even if an incompetent or misinformed user is unable to apply it correctly.  If the question-asker is unable to properly specify WHY he/she could not get the answer to work, there is no reason to suspect that the answer is somehow incorrect.  I might assume that he/she tried to run a brute force attack, but gave up after it didn't work after a while; if the password is 6 or 7 characters long it will take a considerable amount of processing time to crack.  However, none of us knows what bigdg's problem is and why he/she is unable to properly utilize this correct answer.

Absoulutely rxrfrx, I agree with you there, however on the same turn your answer could be absoultely 100% wrong as well.  We do not know because we do not know what bigdg's problem is as you stated.  So...hence my note on Please read the guidelines of EE.  Not to mention I also did post some BruteForce attackers as well.  Before you posted them. Soooo.......you in essence just posted some different ones.  But If mine did not work and yours did not work... or he is doing it wrong...your answer is still not correct untill you can help him to get it correctly with another COMMENT or ANSWER depending on the situation.  So help him out.  Rather than say well the answer is right.  It may be right for you...but not right for him.  He may not know all the technical terms or how to manipulate the software to fix his problem.  Which makes your answer wrong for him.  Until you can help him successfully then will it be a good answer.  Please read the guidelines.  You will understand what I mean.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/cmtyQuestAnswer.jsp
read the topic on: Advice for Experts on Providing Solutions Through Comments or Answers

But the poster is apparently uninformed as how to reject an answer and make the question available again.  New people post an answer to a question by new people and the question NEVER comes to a conclusion because neither the questioner nor the answer poster have any idea what they are doing.  Will this one ever be resolved, probably not.
Bigdg, reject the answer if it didn't work and accept it if it did.  It's that simple.

true dat slink9.

rxrfrx   ! Welcome to E-E! Its common courtesy to provide comments unless you know your answer is the only answer and is 300% correct and is what the questioner is looking for and will fix their problem. Please don’t take this personally, (others could let you know before I and not so diplomatically) I made the same mistake when I first arrived and someone was nice enough to point it out to me (It hurt my feelings, but I soon realized its teamwork that’s used here). This accomplishes a couple of things: First: it doesn't lock the question allowing more exposure to other experts allowing a faster fix (many problems require an interactive dialogue to troubleshoot them properly), Secondly: it gives the questioner the option to make an award based on the best comment that helped the most in fixing their problem and it is also is common courtesy to other experts.  Again welcome and look forward to working with you in the future, a lot of teamwork is used at this forum, as you will see! :>)  Quote shamelessly stolen from Dave, Thanks again Dave

Your answer may be correct, and I hope it is, after all the main goal here is to help the questioner, but when you propose an answer it removes the "accept comment as answer" button thereby robbing the questioner of the choice to choose which expert helped the most. If your comment is chosen by the questioner, you will be awarded the points.
Thank you  
Steve  

The answer is here - http://www.simtel.net/pub/win95/security/
There are MANY password recovery tools there.  One is for RAR files.

First of all rxrfrx, I'm a long way from being incompetent.  But you are close to being ignorant.  If the program does not solve the problem, then you are not 100% correct.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to use RAR password cracker or CRark.  Now going forward, I have been with this forum for 3 yrs now and always get professional help and courtesy.  You need to brush up on these to skills.  I do know how to lock and unlock or reject an answer.  So, once again the dictionary brute force attack will not work......

Wakeup, I would like to personally thank you for your professionalism,.  This is one of the true forums that you can come to and get great advice, without inadequate or be-littling comments from uniformed patrons..-)

No problem.  I hope that we all as EE members can help each other.  It's a team effort sometimes.  Not just one person being right all the time.  And as a computer tech I had to learn that the hard way.  By not always being right.  We can't always know everything.  But with a place like this we can sure help each other learn.

yes thank you.............

If it worked, why a B?

Interesting.  You said you would give the correct answer an extra 1000 points (which is not allowed here) but you didn't even give an A to the correct answer.