text: what program do i need to enable me to play downloaded rar files?   rar files are archives similar to zip files. they are not the files that you can actually play. what you will need to do is unzip them with an archiving utility like winrar* or 7 zip*, once you have done that you will be able to see the file inside and play it with a regular media player (assuming that the file inside the archive is mp3 or similar music file). http://www.rarlab.com/index.htm (winrar - shareware) http://www.7-zip.org/ (7zip - freeware) hope this helps.