how to fix a corrupted file?

[sharmine]

i have downloaded a torrent file. when i tried to play it with my windows media player, it says that the file is corrupted. it is possible for me to fix it and any suggestion of software required? thnx

[guns1inger]

A torrent file is a small marker file that helps you locate the real files to be downloaded. Obviously you have downloaded something using a bittorrent client, and because you are here, I can only assume it is a video file of some description.

You now need to work out what it is and give us more details. G-spot or MediaInfo are good programs to find out what you have downloaded. Post screenshots if you don't know how to read the output.

Then, maybe, we can help.

[jman98]

If the file you downloaded is corrupted, it can't be fixed. Sorry.

guns1inger is just telling you what you want to hear because
1) There is a very very very small chance that your file may be OK and you just don't know what you are doing. This is unlikely but possible.
2) People refuse to believe that some problems can't be fixed, so he wants to give you some hope.

You could always install another player like VLC Media Player and if it reports that your file is corrupted too, then there is nothing you can do. Files available via torrents can easily get corrupted and there is no fix for this.

[Ai Haibara]

Stupid question, perhaps, but... you're not trying to tell Media Player to play the .torrent file, are you? (Yes, I know guns1inger touched on that, above...)

[nTekka]

Jman isn't completely right either... the options for fixing any data corrupted file is pretty limited, but luckily video has more options available.

when you get video is corrupted, chances are its probably missing codec, header is wacky, or your video didn't completely finish downloading. Depending on what you downloaded, Xvid, Divx, MPEG-2, etc. Some programs like AVI preview will attempt to play back AVI files that are incomplete so I guess thats close to salvageable. Could also download other programs to break the video into its elementary stream, this way it will play the good pictures except the corrupted ones... Just remember that video is pretty much a sequences of pictures... so for the whole video to be corrupted and un-salvageable is very very unlikely.

btw its not that people refuse to believe some problems can't be fixed...ALL problems can be fixed, it just depends if fixing the problem is worth the time/effort or money. Of course a quick fix would be to redownload or claim its broken beyond salvageable and to get a new one or move on.