XP handling of ZIP files

[gbhall]

One things always annoying is how long XP takes to 'show' a USB drive in Explorer when that drive has 10-20 Zip files on it.

I think this is to do with XP being able to 'see' inside zip files and also able to display the contents in explorer as if they were in sub-directories. So the first time I try to explore a USB drive, Windows spends a long time internally uncompressing those files.

I want to stop this. I want zip files to just show as zip files and not to be processed in any way whatever by windows - I've got Winzip for that. Hopefully that would speed explorer up greatly.

Anybody know if there is a setting or registry tweak for this?

 

[Sjbrand99]

If as you say, you use Winzip, then you could stop windows doing this by using a different archive compressor format. As far as I know, there is no registry change that can fix your problem, and even if there was, your better option would be mine:

Instead of .zip files, compress them into .rar files. The compression is better and files smaller, and the program that does this best is totally free. It is called 7-Zip. Google it for a download. It does also unzip .zip files and many more formats (alot more than winzip) so i was you i would change to this program.

Hope this helps!

 

[gbhall]

thanks for the idea

Interesting idea, I will give it a try. Slight problem in that zips are readable on any XP computer but presumably I would have to first install 7-zip on every PC I might want to transfer to.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

You can stop XP from using its internal zip feature by running regsvr32 /u zipfldr.

 

[gbhall]

thanks a lot

You can stop XP from using its internal zip feature by running regsvr32 /u zipfldr.

Mictlantecuhtli, that is expertise. Can you also answer this one?

IE7 saving a website page is defaulting to .mht format instead of .htm.

Even worse, the choice taken is not 'sticky' even within the same session. Really annoying.....

I actually do need the htm format as default, so can anyone tell me how to change the default entry for saved pages?