How do I change the password of an .RAR archive, without changing the date/time attributes of the files in the archive? Unfortunately you can't directly change the password of the archive with WinRAR, you have to extract the files, and then make a new archive with the new password. So the created/modified attributes of the files in the archive get changed. I know you can manually change the attributes of a file with available utilities – but there are hundreds of files in the archive, each with unique attributes, so it would take a very long time to "fix" each file before re-archiving it.
I'm using WinRAR 3.51, the last free version. Windows XP Pro SP3.
Update: I don't care if the output is a .RAR file or a ZIP file
IZArc4.1 will convert the RAR to a ZIP, and it keeps the dates. The problem is it compresses the file – there isn't a "store" option, and setting the default to store in the main configuration doesn't effect conversions. The RAR contains uncompressed files.
None of these other archiving programs will even do a conversion. A couple claim to, or try to, but the errors returned indicate a very lousy application. So far I've tried PeaZip, 7-Zip, FilZip, TugZip, SimplyZipSE, QuickZip, and WinShrink (from downloads.cnet.com).
WinRAR gives the error "skipping encryped archive" when I try the conversion. It asks for the password first, and I know it's right, as I opened the archive, and I can read/view all the files in it. It works on non-encrypted files.
Best Answer
I solved this problem by converting the RAR archive to a TAR archive with IZArc, and then converting the TAR archive to an RAR archive with WinRAR (Tools-Convert-Compression for options). This preserved the date/time attributes, got past the problem that WinRAR won't convert a password protected archive (even though I know the password.)