A computer virus is an intelligent program, which can associate itself to certain file extensions for example .ZIP and corrupt the targeted files. Data loss mainly depends upon the nature and motive of the computer virus. In most of the cases, the data gets either completely or partially lost and an error message can appear while accessing the virus infected file. In such scenarios, the user needs to recover and restore the affected files by using a recent backup. But, if the user has not created any backup of corrupted .ZIP files or the backup has been corrupted, then he needs to use advanced Zip Repair tools to completely repair and restore the .ZIP files.

For example, when a user downloads a .ZIP file, he receives the following error message while attempting to open it:

“Header Corrupt”

After the above error message appears, the .ZIP file becomes inaccessible. The main cause of the above error message is that it has been infected by CIH virus. This virus is also known as “W95.CIH”, “Chernobyl”, and “Spacefiller”. This virus mainly affects the .ZIP and .exe files. The .ZIP file can be corrupted with CIH virus by the following ways:

• The computer on which the file was created was infected with CIH virus.
• The .ZIP file may have been passed through an infected computer.

To resolve the above error message and access the .ZIP file, the user needs to follow these two steps:
• Recover .ZIP file from the latest backup.
• Recover .ZIP file from a zip recovery utility software.
The first method fails to perform when the user has not created any recent backup of the inaccessible .ZIP file. In such circumstances, the user needs to use powerful Zip Repair software. Such software scan and repair the infected .ZIP file by incorporating advanced and high-end scanning algorithms. These recovery utilities are valuable for repairing .ZIP files created with different versions of Winzip software. With rich feature set, interactive and highly graphical user interface, these utilities are easy to understand and implement without any prior technical knowledge. These software also feature detailed program documentation.

Stellar Phoenix Zip Recovery performs effective zip repair. It effectively repairs and restores the corrupt .ZIP files. It supports .ZIP files created from Winzip 6 to Winzip 11.1. It can also recover password from .ZIP files up to Winzip 8. This repair utility is compatible with Windows Vista, 2003, XP, 2000 and NT.