FWIW - beware of 7zip software downloader

[Bob F]

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and rebuild process of moving
my disk and OS to an improved PC. I was having trouble finding an ATI unified
AVstream driver, and finally found what I thought would work at a site that uses
7zip to transfer the program to you. I did the transfer.

Immediately after the transfer, I went into add/remove programs and removed 7zip
and then re-booted.

Suddenly, almost none of the programs on my PC were visible or runable. I had to
find the windows restore program in a very roundablout method, but it would not
run either. I ended up throwing away a long days work, and restoring the drive
with the backup I made just before the project, and putting it back into the
origional PC until I can find more time.

I found several descriptions of similar problems online. Apparently,
uninstalling 7zip can really hose your registry.

Are there any major driver download sites that still just let you download the
file and not install a program to do the download which doesn't even let you
store it where you want to?

 

[Nil]

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and rebuild
process of moving my disk and OS to an improved PC. I was having
trouble finding an ATI unified AVstream driver, and finally found
what I thought would work at a site that uses 7zip to transfer the
program to you. I did the transfer.

Immediately after the transfer, I went into add/remove programs
and removed 7zip and then re-booted.

Suddenly, almost none of the programs on my PC were visible or
runable. I had to find the windows restore program in a very
roundablout method, but it would not run either. I ended up
throwing away a long days work, and restoring the drive with the
backup I made just before the project, and putting it back into
the origional PC until I can find more time.

I found several descriptions of similar problems online.
Apparently, uninstalling 7zip can really hose your registry.

Are there any major driver download sites that still just let you
download the file and not install a program to do the download
which doesn't even let you store it where you want to?

There's something confusing about your message. As far as I know, there
is no such thing as "7zip Downloader". 7zip is a file
compression/archiver program, in the same category as PKZip, Winzip,
WinRAR, TAR, etc. It has no download features. Maybe something else you
installed had it bundled, or you installed it by mistake.

That said, I do see quite a few complaints about problems uninstalling
7zip and how it can hose your system. This seems to have been going on
for quite a while, but I don't see any real solutions, either. 7zip is
a open-source community project, which makes it free, but also means
that nobody takes real responsibility for it. I see that the project
has a user forum, and this problem has been reported there... but no
one has addressed the complaints.

This is disappointing to me. I often see stuff archived in 7zip format,
and the program is required to extract them. I have it myself and I use
it pretty often. I wasn't planning to get rid of it, but if I were, I
wouldn't now. I'll just leave it alone for the time being.

 

[Paul]

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and rebuild process of moving
my disk and OS to an improved PC. I was having trouble finding an ATI unified
AVstream driver, and finally found what I thought would work at a site that uses
7zip to transfer the program to you. I did the transfer.

Immediately after the transfer, I went into add/remove programs and removed 7zip
and then re-booted.

Suddenly, almost none of the programs on my PC were visible or runable. I had to
find the windows restore program in a very roundablout method, but it would not
run either. I ended up throwing away a long days work, and restoring the drive
with the backup I made just before the project, and putting it back into the
origional PC until I can find more time.

I found several descriptions of similar problems online. Apparently,
uninstalling 7zip can really hose your registry.

Are there any major driver download sites that still just let you download the
file and not install a program to do the download which doesn't even let you
store it where you want to?

Find the official site via Wikipedia. This is to trace down
the author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7zip

It lists this as the site of the author.

http://www.7-zip.org/

And checking a link on there, the files are hosted by Sourceforge.
Sourceforge is generally more trustworthy than the sites that
pay for downloads by inserting toolbars. Your download
will be direct. You will be shown advertising on the web page
that shows when the download begins.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe

I don't remember having "toolbar trouble" with a download
from that site, so it should generally be OK.

You can check the site reputation on siteadvisor.

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/sourceforge.net

You click the "view community reviews", to get details over
and above any lightweight "automated testing". In fact,
the users report the odd abnormality, which is interesting.
I've never had a spot of trouble.

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/sourceforge.net/msgpage

"Despite an overwhelming number of downloads on this site,
all or almost all of them seem to be safe. Downloading a
file from there, you can be almost sure you are not going
to plant some malware into your OS."

And the 7z920 on the site, appears to have the same
checksum as when I downloaded it from that site in
June of 2012.

Paul

 

[Nil]

Do you know commercial software houses (therefore not open-source)
that take responsibility for their programs???
I know none of them.

I see lots of them. If a software company wants to continue to sell
their stuff, they will pay attention to reports of serious bugs like
this and then fix them, or at least prescribe a fix or workaround. It
would mean their death in the marketplace if they got the reputation of
killing people's computers. Also, many software vendors have active
user forums that are monitored by the developers.

I see reports of this 7zip uninstall problem going back at least 3
years. It's obvious that nobody involved in the project cares.

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and rebuild process of moving
my disk and OS to an improved PC. I was having trouble finding an ATI unified
AVstream driver, and finally found what I thought would work at a site that uses
7zip to transfer the program to you. I did the transfer.

Immediately after the transfer, I went into add/remove programs and removed 7zip
and then re-booted.

Suddenly, almost none of the programs on my PC were visible or runable. I had to
find the windows restore program in a very roundablout method, but it would not
run either. I ended up throwing away a long days work, and restoring the drive
with the backup I made just before the project, and putting it back into the
origional PC until I can find more time.

I found several descriptions of similar problems online. Apparently,
uninstalling 7zip can really hose your registry.

Are there any major driver download sites that still just let you download the
file and not install a program to do the download which doesn't even let you
store it where you want to?

7Zip is a good compressor-decompressor that has been hacked big time.
There are lots of non-original variants of it out there now.
You better scan your hdd with more than one scanner that
can look for rootkits. Run tddskiller, too.
NEVER use a downloader unless you are positive about its source.

 

[Twayne]

In

There's something confusing about your message. As far as
I know, there is no such thing as "7zip Downloader". 7zip
is a file compression/archiver program, in the same
category as PKZip, Winzip, WinRAR, TAR, etc. It has no
download features. Maybe something else you installed had
it bundled, or you installed it by mistake.

That said, I do see quite a few complaints about problems
uninstalling 7zip and how it can hose your system. This
seems to have been going on for quite a while, but I
don't see any real solutions, either. 7zip is a
open-source community project, which makes it free, but
also means that nobody takes real responsibility for it.
I see that the project has a user forum, and this problem
has been reported there... but no one has addressed the
complaints.

This is disappointing to me. I often see stuff archived
in 7zip format, and the program is required to extract
them. I have it myself and I use it pretty often. I
wasn't planning to get rid of it, but if I were, I
wouldn't now. I'll just leave it alone for the time
being.

7-zip made its way onto my machine too and I did uninstall and reinstall it
with no problems. Seems my AV got in the way of the first install. But, no
damage whatsoever after the first restart and the few hours before I got
round to reinstall it. Windows 7 Home Premium.

As for it being needed to unzip anything zipped with it: Not true unless the
zip format was the "special" setting in it. Otherwise even XP will unzip the
files, tough I use WinZip 99% of the time.
I keep it around for the few zip formats that winzip doesn't work on so
it's very occasionally handy.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Nil]

7-zip made its way onto my machine too and I did uninstall and
reinstall it with no problems. Seems my AV got in the way of the
first install. But, no damage whatsoever after the first restart
and the few hours before I got round to reinstall it. Windows 7
Home Premium.

Most or all of the problems I saw reported had to do with Windows XP.
Maybe it doesn't affect later Windows.

As for it being needed to unzip anything zipped with it: Not true
unless the zip format was the "special" setting in it. Otherwise
even XP will unzip the files, tough I use WinZip 99% of the time.

If I didn't make it clear, I meant to refer specifically to .7z format
archived. My XP and Windows 7 computers won't open that format on their
own.

I keep it around for the few zip formats that winzip doesn't
work on so it's very occasionally handy.

I have a very old version of Winzip from back in the Win95/98 days, but
I always use 7zip now. the 7zip interface is kind of cruddy, but it
does the job well enough. It doesn't need to be pretty.

 

[Nil]

So you spoke about the fixing of bugs.
When I read "responsibility" I thought instead to responsibility
for economic damages that certain programs produce to users. In
such sense there is not a software house that refund the damaged
users (in the best case the software house refunds the price of
the program). That's what I intented.

Yeah, you're right about that. It's always in that microscopic fine-
print that you have to "agree" to during install that supposedly
absolves them from any and all legal responsibility for damages.

 

[JJ]

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and rebuild process of moving
my disk and OS to an improved PC. I was having trouble finding an ATI unified
AVstream driver, and finally found what I thought would work at a site that uses
7zip to transfer the program to you. I did the transfer.

Looks like you downloaded files from questionable sites.

Device drivers rarely uses 7-Zip (*.7z) for packaging the files, nor use it
for the installer self-extractor.

From where did you download the driver and 7-Zip?

 

[Bob F]

Looks like you downloaded files from questionable sites.

Device drivers rarely uses 7-Zip (*.7z) for packaging the files, nor
use it for the installer self-extractor.

From where did you download the driver and 7-Zip?

Unfortunately, all records of where I had been were lost in the damage.

 

[Twayne]

In

Yesterday, I was nearing the end of the transfer and
rebuild process of moving my disk and OS to an improved
PC. I was having trouble finding an ATI unified AVstream
driver, and finally found what I thought would work at a
site that uses 7zip to transfer the program to you. I did
the transfer.
Immediately after the transfer, I went into add/remove
programs and removed 7zip and then re-booted.

Suddenly, almost none of the programs on my PC were
visible or runable. I had to find the windows restore
program in a very roundablout method, but it would not
run either. I ended up throwing away a long days work,
and restoring the drive with the backup I made just
before the project, and putting it back into the
origional PC until I can find more time.
I found several descriptions of similar problems online.
Apparently, uninstalling 7zip can really hose your
registry.
Are there any major driver download sites that still just
let you download the file and not install a program to do
the download which doesn't even let you store it where
you want to?

Of course there is; use a search engine and look for CNET or PC magazine,
etc. as sources.
Whatever you installed was malware; that's not the program's fault no
matter where you think you got it from.
Run all you AV an AM progs to clean things up.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Bob F]

In

Of course there is; use a search engine and look for CNET or PC
magazine, etc. as sources.
Whatever you installed was malware; that's not the program's fault
no matter where you think you got it from.
Run all you AV an AM progs to clean things up.

There seem to be others that have had the same problem.