For some reason, my Stuffit 7 (Expander, Deluxe and Helper) have all started setting odd flags to my files after they are expanded. Some get odd labels, others have invisible flags set on them, some think they now have bundles and custom icons despite having no resource forks. What's happening to me?

iMac 233, running OS 9.2.2 with 160MB ram

Paradox-

We have not seen any type of expansion issue like you describe. Can you please give specific steps including the specific application you are using to expand files?

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Josh Stender
Aladdin Systems Technical Support

I have currently gone back to 6.5.1, but I remember steps:

ANY compressed file downloads from any program. .sit, .uu, .zip. This also happened when I stuffed a folder with fairly useless SimpleText files and proceeded to try and unstuff it afterwards.

Afterwards, I had this happen with: Stuffit Expander. With the setting I had, it would delete the original, then give me the file. However, the settings on the file had random finder flags. I had to use ResEdit or Resourcer to see and fix the invible files, but things like the "has custom icon" flag were being set for files made on a PC, as well as setting the alias flag. The files were intact, but the flags were random. Unstuffing the file again gave me randomly different flags set. It would also sometimes set the Finder label colours as well.

The same would happen with Deluxe, or with the StuffitCM, or Stuffit Rename. I had them all set to delete the originals, in case that matters.

I am experiencing a similar condition. My system is A Mac G4 500mhz running OS 9.2.1. My problem has only occured while trying to unstuff some Palm .prc files. Sometimes when I unstuff them, the unstuffed file appears as an alias with no original to be found as well as a custom color assigned to the icon. I am going to try and downgrade back to Expander 6.5.1 and see if it expands the same file without any problems.

I downgraded to stuffit expander 6.5 and didn't even restart my computer and the same file I was trying to expand with Expander 7.0 unstuffed perfectly with no problems. I don't want to make any false assumptions, but from the problems I am experiencing I think it might have either something to do with PC zipped files, since Palm .prc files can be stuffed or zipped by either a mac or PC user. It stands to reason that this problem could have something to do with the encryption method used by PC users to zip their files and then when a mac user downloads it and uses Stuffit expander 7.0 there is some sort of problem decoding? I know this is vague, but I am trying to provide any sort of hypothesis I can. For those Aladdin reps out there try using OS 9.2.1 stuffit expander 7 and go to www.palmgear.com and search for the game called bejeweled. Try downloading the .zip version. On my computer using IE 5.1.4 I get a popup message asking how I want to save it. I just press the "save file as" button and it asks me where I want to save it. Then after it downloads I drag it onto stuffit expander 7 and I see it unstuffing the individual files but when it finishes all I am left with is a folder called "bejeweled160 Folder" with nothing in it. Similar Palm files downloaded get the weird alias filetype or finder colorations as described in earlier posts. If I unstuff it with stuffit expander 6.5 I get three files in a folder called "bejeweled160 Folder". They are: "Astraware Bejeweled.htm, Bejeweled-SonySound.prc, Bejeweled.prc". These are what I should get. It looks like there could be a problem with stuffit expander 7.0.

Outstanding! I'll go back to 6.5.1
The only concern I have is that once programmers start stuffing with 7.0, I'll be in a bit of a fix. Hopefully Aladdyn will have a fix for this by that time. Thanks again!

I'm running StuffIt 7 under Mac OS 9.1 and am seeing the same problem with strange Finger flags. It appears to mostly happen with .bin files (often downloaded through VersionTracker). The strange labels are OK but the invisible files are a pain.

So, where does one get 6.5? I can't find any links to it on Aladdyn's site.

If you don't have the previous version 6.5 archived somewhere yourself then your best bet is to try searching the web. All you need is the free stuffit expander 6.5 so maybe it is possible there is a site out there that has it available for download. Try a google search www.google.com
Sorry I can't be more specific, but it seems that all companies, that come out with new software now delete any existence of previous versions from their websites so that users that upgrade have to be stuck with problems and are forced to post them here. It's a win win situation for software companies, because they get immediate feedback on their new product because people are forced to deal with it.
BTW, I have found that if you are like me and expected Stuffit Expander 7 to be working correctly and kept trying to use it to expand an archive because I thought something was wrong on my end you may have a bigger problem then it just not working. When I was trying to unstuff the same file a few times and I didn't see any results, it was because the results were invisible files which I think someone mentioned in an earlier post. The bad part is, if you are using a Classic Mac version their is nothing built into the finder to show invisible files. I recommend finding an application that will show invisibles and maybe even something like "FileBuddy" which allows you to delete invisible files. To my surprise when I looked in my downloads folder where I was trying to unstuff files with Expander 7 I had a lot of invisible files and even some invisible aliases of files. I don't know about you, but this was annoying since I couldn't have things with the same name in the folder because there were invisible items with that name already. Just another bit of info.

Here are some files I downloaded today (download done on a Windows system and then moved to my Mac via an Orb disk) from VersionTracker and what problems I had.

pc-mac-net_filesharedemo.dmg.gz
pc-mac_passwordvaultdemo.dmg.gz
The resulting .dmg files came out as aliases
sidi200.dmg.gz
The sidi200.dmg file same out as an invisible alias.

The above .gz files unpacked corrected after being moved to another folder - except for unexpected labels on the files.

AppleMailConduit041.sit.bin
iCalServicesPack.sit.bin
macghostview26.sit.bin
These files unpacked OK except the .sit files disappeared
(did not exist as opposed to being invisible) and just the
folders resulting from unpacking the .sit files were left. My
Expander preferences do NOT enable deletion of the unpacked
archives so the above behavior was unexpected.