Along with the common compressed files, Zip archive also contains a special file that is known as Catalog File. Catalog file is used for maintaining information about hierarchy of data files and directories. The catalog file is managed as B-tree file.

The core component of catalog file is the . It might have any number of records. The catalog entry of every object is stored in an element. The catalog file is the most important component of every Zip archive and its loss might cause serious problems.

Sometimes, this file may get corrupted or deleted due to any of the following reasons:
. Virus attack
. Unexpected system shutdown
. Missing parity bit
. Incomplete compression

In such situations, when you try to extract Zip archive, you might encounter the error message, similar to the following:
“List index out of bounds (502139)”
The Zip file generally gets corrupted due to missing or damaged catalog files. It occurs when the necessary data in the catalog file is missing.

No matter what the cause of this problem is the ultimate result would be the inaccessibility and loss of your precious data. To gain access of stored data, you need to fix this issue as quickly as possible.

Any compression or archiving software like WinZip does not include any inbuilt zip repair tool and thus you need to opt for third party zip recovery applications to recover your lost data. The Zip repair software are commanding tools, which allow you to have easy, quick and absolute Zip recovery in most of the corruption scenarios.

Stellar Phoenix Zip Recovery is the best ever made and award winning Zip repair tool, which works in all possible scenarios of Zip corruption. This is a read only and non destructive zip recovery tool, which allows you to easily and smoothly repair and restore your corrupted Zip file.