hi! guys i need assistance on this error "An error occurred while loading the archive." everytime i download something which has an extension of .exe i brings me the above error i dont know what to do please help.

Since you posted in the "*Nix" forum but didn't specify which OS exactly, I'm going to assume you're on some Linux distro. If that's the case, the executable file format is not recognised by *Nix.

What exactly are you trying to do?

And a tip for next time: it can only benefit you to provide as much relevant background information as possible in your OP; this will save time and wield you a quicker solution

I'm pretty sure that's the error you get when you try to open a .exe on Ubuntu and it opens with Archive Manager. In order to run .exe (Windows binaries) programs, you'll need another program like wine to emulate a Windows environment to run them in.

v0idE wrote:And a tip for next time: it can only benefit you to provide as much relevant background information as possible in your OP; this will save time and wield you a quicker solution

*yield

im using ubuntu version 9, yah i was trying to run .exe file i have downloaded wine but still everytime i try to open the fie using wine it doesnt open. i want to install vmware on my machine and the vmware comes with the extension of .exe looking forward to ur assistance

Kindly be patient with me as im still new with linux OS

Depending on which VMware product you're using, when you download it from VMware you should have a choice between Windows (.exe) and Linux (.rpm). In this case, download the Linux version since you're on a Linux OS.

There are also alternatives to VMware products, such as VirtualBox. VirtualBox is pretty popular and definitely favoured by the Linux community; it's also well documented and heaps of installation guides have been written already.

To get you started, here's a guide to installing VirtualBox on Ubuntu...

Also, make sure you read the documentation and FAQs provided by the developers of whatever you decide to install. Chances are they've written some installation guides which will be helpful to you in this learning stage.

Let us know how you go

have you tried right click then open with?
even if you installed wine it still might be defaulting to openning a exe file with your archive manager
either change the open with properties presumably
right click
open with
and change that to wine program loader or wine depending on what you see
then try again and post here or pm me if it didnt work

I'm pretty sure you can open a self extracting archive with WINE too. Though I can't test it right now due to being at work.
This is maybe prefered in this case since you won't have to install windows in a virtual invironment just to extract an archive.

thanx guys problem solved, my virtual machine is up and running i have used the link provided by voide