Zip Files

[Nigel H-J]

Hi all. Probably you haven't noticed but I have not been around too often as had a nasty on my computer (Virus) and it had to go in for treatment as I could not access any drives at all!! Have now changed my anti-virus to AVG.

Now all is well and running much better.

Question, have XP Home and before I had a winzip programme to unzip files, have not yet got one but have noticed that XP appears to just open them so......wait for the stupid question!! :doho:

Is this an inbuilt feature of XP to automatically unzip the files when you click on them or is it best to install a winzip? Had not noticed this before with XP.

Will be a few more days before I get round to re-installing FS as so much to do in a very short time.

Sarcastic comments not tolerated!!

Nigel.

[SkippyBing]

XP can open Zip files by default, from memory it sort of treats it like a folder. I don't think you can create Zip files in XP without a separate program.

[stegs]

XP will create zip files without additional software. Just right click on 'send to' compressed folder.

Steve

[DaveB]

That is correctimundo Steve ;-) A separate 'zip' program is a thing of the past ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Nigel H-J]

Many thanks guys, just what would I do without all this help and advice...

Nigel.

[ianhind]

A separate 'zip' program is a thing of the past

So long as you can cope with XP seeing zip files as folders, and hence searching through them = s..l..o..w.. during a Windows Exlorer search

And probably irrelevant for a home user, but the built-in zip capability does not support high security encryption that Winzip is capable of.

[Paul K]

That is correctimundo Steve ;-) A separate 'zip' program is a thing of the past ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Blimey, all these years with XP and WinZip, and I didn't know that! :roll: ;-)

[stegs]

I agree Ian. It's sometimes like watching paint dry opening an XP zip folder. |-)

Steve

[DaveB]

To be honest.. I didn't think Winzip went any further than WinME though it's so long ago that I've forgotten. Winzip does/did offer a variety of different compression formats but I couldn't live with seeing 2 types of compressed files on my pc so WinZip was put out to grass. What happens in the big wide world of industrial commerce may require different tools and encryption but the 'compressed folder' offered as standard in WinXP is more than adequate for the home user ;-)

Can't see where the 'watching paint dry' comes from when opening a windows compressed folder either. I double click on it and it's open

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Garry Russell]

I use WinRAR which apart from creating well compressed easy to use archive fromat, creates my zips

Garry