Sometimes when I download a freebie and upon attempted install, I get a message that this is a multi disk archive file. Would appreciate an explanation what this signifies. Thanks Ray Van Sickler

Multiple disks for a freebie? That is one big freebie! Can you give an example of one of these freebies so we can check it out?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, floppy disks were the best thing that anyone had for removable data storage. Back then, 1.44 MB was sometimes enough to save a whole program. But if not, the only other option was to create a multi-disk archive file. All it means is that you have one zip file stored over multiple disks, and the archive includes information on the order in which they are to be unzipped.

yeah..there was ice, and de-ice, and zip chunk..man, does that bring back memories..;) There were others as well. You'd need to find all the seperate files, and have the program to 'in the darkness bind them' (I can't remember if pkzip did multi-copies like that or not..;)

Generally with a multi-part compressed file, all files should be in one directory. If you got only one file in your directory, you are probably missing one or more files. They'll be one "master" file, and one or more "chunks", for lack of better names. For PKZIP / WinZip, the master file will have a "zip" extension, and the chunk files will be "z01", "z02", ... They should all be in one directory. In every case I've seen you start (double-click) the "master" file. It knows it's a multi-part file, and will automatically look for the related chunks in the same directory. If it's a multi-part file, and it can't find it's related "chunk" files, it generally will give you an error message. You can force it to go ahead usually, but you'll be missing files.

OMG I forgot all about that, it's been so long. Yeah, I forgot that zip utilities had a span disk function. Lordy, I sure don't miss the days of floppy disk storage! LOL

The spanning is also helpful for putting multiple GB files on CD's. I know it's a bit antiquated, but almost all PC's can read a CDR's; you can't say the same for DVD's.

If you're using XP's compressed folders feature, and your ZIP was corrupted during download, you get that message.

I think there's a bit that gets flipped if it's a multi-disk zip file, so I guess in theory a corrupted zip file could generate this error. The message you usually getin XP is "Compressed (zipped) Folders Error: The compressed (zipped) Folder is invalid or corrupted."

That's odd - so far, every time I've had a failed download that didn't finish, I've had the message "insert disk 1 of multi-disk set" or something similar. XP Professional, SR1 if that makes any difference.