The best two programs to extract .rar and .zip files are "Winzip" and "7zip". I use 7zip because its free and I think its simpler.
7zip is sick because you can do ISO\RAR\ZIP......however it is slower to compress files as compared to winzip I use to use power archiver which is the best I found hands down but to get a good bootleg copy is hard so i gave up on it because I would have to bootleg it every couple months.