I have tried to download three games this week including Nick Bounty. Every time I try to open the file I'm told there's not a valid archive for this file. What does that mean and is it fixable?

It probably means that the downloaded file became corrupted in the download transfer.

If this is happening to more than one downloaded file from different sites than it could be a problem with the program which you are using to download them with.

Inferno

Try to redownload and resume if possible. Good chance the download wasn't complete, or the transfer could have been corrupted as stated.


Gamehound

Inferno...this happens to me all the time...with almost every game I try to download. What is a good program to use for downloading? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated? I've never bought such a program...just used the winzip introductory deal...someone told me not to pay for it? Does that cause the problem? I'm not very bright about this....thanks:)

Winzip shouldn't cause an invalid archive problem, even if you have a demo version.
Do you have dialup or DSL or cable?
Where are you downloading the demos from? Always the same place or different places?

This may be your ISP's problem rather than your problem. But if you have dialup, some sites will cut you off if you take too long to download. A download manager may help if you have dialup, since it can download in segments and resume broken downloads. You have to watch out which download manager you use though, since some contain undesirable things as well as the download manager.

I have dialup and I never knew anything about download managers? I just download from the first choice of mirrors or the one download option I get...is that what you mean? What is an ISP?

ISP = Internet Service Provider

Examples of ISP's

Earthlink
AOL
COX
Road Runner
SBC
Charter
Comcast
Verizon
NetZero
MSN
Mediacom
Optimum Online


You're probably getting truncated downloads (with the end of the file chopped off) because of being on dialup. I used to get that from some sites when I had dialup. I still get it sometimes, but not as much.

I don't know of a free guaranteed spyware-free download manager. I used to think Gozilla was spyware-free, but now I'm not so sure. Castlecops reports it
http://castlecops.com/modules.php?name=CLSID&query=gozilla

Maybe an old version would be spyware-free. But I don't know.
http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=gozilla

There is also Net Vampire, which is shareware. If you try it and want to continue using it it costs $20.
http://www.netvampire.com/

Thanks for info guys...I have AOL for ISP and I wonder if their automatic Spyware is preventing me from completing downloads. Of course I feel pretty sure they would not admit to this So I wonder if everyone else has the same exposure to spyware on their computers what makes mine different? Do most people pay for a download manager? And then are they able to download with more success? But then if we download alot aren't we more vulnerable? Is my resistance to upgrading from WIN98 adding to my problems?