How to prevent xp to display zipped files as folder

[V S Rawat]

In my xpsp2, *.zip files are shown as folder, and going into the
folder shows the content (all files in that zip.)

I find that very irritating, as several folders have several zip
files, and entire folder list left pane in my windows explorer
window gets consumed ( I have not kept it full screen).

How can I tell it NOT to show zip files as folder?

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[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

In my xpsp2, *.zip files are shown as folder, and going into the
folder shows the content (all files in that zip.)

I find that very irritating, as several folders have several zip
files, and entire folder list left pane in my windows explorer
window gets consumed ( I have not kept it full screen).

How can I tell it NOT to show zip files as folder?

I don't think there is any way to change this behavior? A zip file is a
folder containing the compressed files.

 

[Vanguard]

In my xpsp2, *.zip files are shown as folder, and going into the
folder shows the content (all files in that zip.)

I find that very irritating, as several folders have several zip
files, and entire folder list left pane in my windows explorer
window gets consumed ( I have not kept it full screen).

How can I tell it NOT to show zip files as folder?

Unregister the .zip support in Windows XP by deregistering its DLL file:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

You then lose all support for .zip files and will have to use a 3rd party
tool.

 

[vsrawat]

I would like to know more about it before trying it out.

I understand that what you have suggested will solve my problem and zip
files would not be shown as folders.

That is what I want.

But, what other support for zip files will I lose?

Will "Winzip" group of options appear in explorer right click menu?

will .zip open with winzip?

zip is very much required for my activities, thus I can't afford to
loose these two functionalities.

thanks.

 

[t.cruise]

If you :

Unregister the .zip support in Windows XP by unregistering its DLL file:

Start button/Run/ then type: regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll


Then click the OK button, Windows XP will no longer show zip files as folders, and you
will also lose all Windows XP native zip functions. You will then have to use a third
party utility for ZIP files, such as WinZip. Winzip will show zip files as files, NOT
folders. You will be able to double click a zip file, and it will open in WinZip,
allowing for extracting the contents of the zip file. You also have the choice of adding
WinZip commands to context menus (right click menus) in Windows Explorer and My Computer.
The context menu command which I use most often is Add to Zip File/New. I select some
files, right click, then left click Add to Zip File, and when the window opens I click the
NEW button. When the dialog box opens I name the new file, then save it to the folder I
where I want it. There are other context menu commands like Zip and Email, which zips the
selected files, allows you to name the new zip file, and opens a compose window of your
default email program with the new zip file already attached. I really like WinZip. It
has many more features than the Windows XP native zip, which also irritated me showing the
zip files as folders. I unregistered the zip folder dll the day that I installed Windows
XP, and installed WinZip. You can download a trial version of WinZip at:

http://www.winzip.com/

unregister the native Windows XP as described above, then reboot. Then install and try
WinZip. If you do not like WinZip. You can always uninstall it, reboot, then get the
native Windows XP zip folders back by:

Start button/Run type:

regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

then click the OK button. But, I doubt whether you will want the native Windows XP zip
folders back, once you have used WinZip for a while. I prefer using the Classic option
for WinZip rather than the wizards.

 

[PopS]

I would like to know more about it before trying it out.

I understand that what you have suggested will solve my problem
and zip
files would not be shown as folders.
====> Correct.
That is what I want.

But, what other support for zip files will I lose?

====> None. Actually, you will gain substantial features with
Winzip. Winzip isn't the only program out there that'll do this
for you, but IMO it's the best of the bunch and has been around
for years and years.

Will "Winzip" group of options appear in explorer right click
menu?

====> Yes. Depending on what you allow during the install, you
will have a lot of add to, unzip features on your right-click
menues.

will .zip open with winzip?

====> Definitely. That's what it's whole history of many years
is based on. Windows .zip (folders with the zipper on them) are
in fact the same file format. You can see more on the Help and
Support reference made in an earlier post from me.

zip is very much required for my activities, thus I can't
afford to
loose these two functionalities.

====> I recommend giving it a try; it'll do what you want and
then some, I'm pretty sure. If you should decide you want to
remove it, that's easy to do and it's a clean operation so, IMO
there's minimal risk to anything.
If you're into backup jobs of differing types at different
times for different collection, etc., you might want to consider
their pay version too becuase it'll do all that Schedule with
scripts can do and then some, without having to mess with the
scripts. As I recall you get a year's worth of updates/upgrades
with the pay version. They have a comparison chart on the two at
winzip.com also. AFAIK their "hype" is all true; I've never
found it to be out of kilter in any way and I'm a long time
freebie user of the product. I've used them since the days of
PKWare and PKZIP and PKUNZIP command line software. It's a
stable product.

Oh, no need to de-register the XP zip functionality; it lives
fine with Winzip. You could even (but get no compression benefit
from it) zip XP zips and retrieve them. I do it routinely to put
files all into one file for moving someplace. I just tell Winzip
to skip the compressing in those cases, since it saves time not
trying to compress an already compressed file <g>.

Pop

 

[V S Rawat]

Hi T.Cruise and PopS,

worked like a charm.

I unregistered that particular dll, and xp stopped showing zip
as folders, though winzip functionalities are still there. Just
like good old 98se days.

winzip did ask itself to be made default for file associations.
I said yes.

thanks a lot.

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[t.cruise]

Glad to be of help. Others may like the native Windows XP zip folders. I prefer
WinZip...
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T.C.
t__cruise@[NoSpam]hotmail.com
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