• Windows running .NET framework 4.0+ (<-- not up to date, changed in latest versions)
• 7z.exe (tested with version 16.04 [64] ) to test *.7z, *.bz2 (BZip2), *.gz, *.tar, *.wim, *.xz, *.zip files. Output needs to be in English!
• flac.exe (tested with version 1.3.2 win32/win64 tested) to test *.7z files. Output needs to be in English!
• To test *.rar files, UnRAR.exe is provided with the application. Output needs to be in English!

Setup

1. Download the software package from this page, extract the files and run "setup.exe".
2. At first run, you have to agree with the licence.
3. Go to "Settings" tab.
   1. In "Preferences" subtab, the path to the folder where you want logs to be written in "Log folder" field. This is where the result logs will be generated. If it does not exist yet, it will created when the first log file need to be written.
   2. In ".exe files" subtab, fill the paths where "7z.exe" and "flac.exe" can be found. UnRAR.exe should be set already as its license allows its inclusion to this software.
      (You may find 7z.exe through http://www.7-zip.org/ and flac.exe through https://xiph.org/flac/ )

There are some more settings in the "Settings" tab. For now I'll let you explore them.

Usage

• Process could get broken if .exe files command line outputs change. In that case you would most likely get "Failed" test results for files that are not actually broken. (Which is safer than the other way around.)
• As 99.99% of my archives are *.rar files, and even my *.flac files are in *.rar archives, RAR is the format I tested the most by simply using the application. Hence the other formats are getting less intense testing.

There are a lot of things that I would like to add/change to this project. On the other hand, early versions have done the work they were expected to for years now... And I can absolutely not focus full time on it. Hence, time between upgrades may be very short or very long.

And by the way, if I get support for it I may be able to give it more attention.

Thing I would like to do next.

Things that I think would be significant improvement but I really can't get into them at this time.

Things that I don't see like priorities at all

Known issues

• 2023-10-28: I noticed that some FLAC files are reported as corrupted when flac.exe 1.4.2 or 1.4.3 are used as testers but not if the same files are tests with flac.exe 1.3.2 (those are the version numbers I have done actual tests with). This doesn't seem to be an issue on Archive Tester side but on FLAC's side.
• If last file(s) testing is significantly slower than previous files, estimated time to finish may become negative, which makes sense from a purely mathematical point of view, but this notation may be confusing. This may get changed in a future version.
• "Exceptions at test time" counter is greyed out but is not reset when re-launching the tested. It should be reset.
• In Windows 11, the fields in Configuration > Testers are always grey out (inactive) and empty (displaying placeholder text). Though, testers can actually be selected using the "Select" button, even if their path won't display. (Tested with .rar and .flac files, will try to correct at some point.)
• Bugs when using a very short timeout settings or a 00:00:00 timeout value were fixed in version 0.2.2.1, however using extremely short timeout may still result in wrong file counts. Probably due to things timing out while they are still being initialised. I leave the tracking of this bug for another time for now, but, to avoid these, I would recommend not to use time out smaller than 00:00:02, however, the precise treshold probably depends on execution speed and the errors are eaier to trigger in Release than in Debug. Anyway, such short time out is not expected to be useful. In my usual use cases a time out of several hours is more appropriate.)
• Making installers and certificates and so on is not my cup of tea... it sometimes necessary to uninstall previous version.
• ...