why the memory often gets "held" or 'trapped"

brannsiu

Distinguished
Apr 20, 2013
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recently I've downloaded a couple of zip/rar files that should be virus-free, because it's made and sent from my very trusted friend.

However, the zip/rar files likely to be corrupted, when I try to extract them they can't be extracted but no error message was given and the zip windows is like getting frozen. Every other programs getting slow and I have to CTRL+ALT+DEL to try to force to close some applications or even get to restart.

Is it a sign of hardware failure ? Or is it just because of the corrupted zip/rar files that causes all memory try to make the calculations and so the whole system gets "frozen" ?
 
Solution
Any corruption in a file or system causes it to try many times before opening or declaring it unusable and that may take a lot of resources. It's not exactly a sign of HW failure.