WinRAR is a pain in that it
used to be free many years ago, but now requests payment. The last version I installed about nine months ago does still work, but gives me a reminder that it is not free to use every time I use it to decompress comething. I don't use it to compress, because I use 7-zip for that.
7-Zip is free, works brilliantly, and is available here:
http://www.7-zip.org/No hassles with any ad-ware or nag-ware either.
This adds a "7-zip" entry to the "right-click" options, so once you've "control-click" selected all the single files to put into an archive, right-click on one of the selected files, choose the "7-zip" option, and it'll then give you a range of things to do, including "add to [foldername].zip" (where [foldername] is the name of the windows folder you're presently in. I then usually change the name to the current challenge, so that the next time I'm zipping results they don't get added to a pre-existing zip file.
(I presume you're familiar with holding down Control while left clicking the individual files to add more files to the selection. This is how to get the ones you want from amongst your other tries, tweaks and fails.)
7-zip also handles decompressing
most .rar files.
Lastly, I created a second profile in AR (the "change profile" option on the start page) to keep entries submitted for a challenge I'm hosting separate from the solutions I built for other challenges. Helps with that selection problem. Also, the "number first" naming method for successful solutions does tend to group them near the top of the list.
It's all personal tips and tricks, but it is easier for others to decompress the results file if it just contains the files without any folder structure.
For example, when I right-click on a .zip file, one of the options 7-zip allows is to "extract contents here", so if the zip file contains .lvl2 solutions, they can be instantly extracted into the same folder. If that just extracts a folder containing the files, then I still have to copy/move files around to get them where they need to go. I think that's what Ioncorpse was being irritated by.....