Windows explorer reads .zip files when opening a directory

[dbabits]

When you open a directory tree in Explorer(on XP), any zip files there
are read.(just trust me on it).
Now, MSFT may think this is a great feature, but apparently they did
not know that my directories happen to have some zip files that are
200MB in size.

Guess what happens.. Your machine is hosed for 10-15 mins while
Explorer is going through that zip(don't ask me why). There's no way to
stop it. You can kill explorer, but you may as well just push that
button and hard-reboot.

Does anybody know if it's possible to disable that "feature"?

thanks!

 

[Pavel]

You could just have some other ZIP archiving program, such as Winrar, Winzip
or other take over the ZIP by associating the ZIP with such program.

 

[Stan Brown]

When you open a directory tree in Explorer(on XP), any zip files there
are read.(just trust me on it).
Now, MSFT may think this is a great feature, but apparently they did
not know that my directories happen to have some zip files that are
200MB in size.

Guess what happens.. Your machine is hosed for 10-15 mins while
Explorer is going through that zip(don't ask me why). There's no way to
stop it. You can kill explorer, but you may as well just push that
button and hard-reboot.

Does anybody know if it's possible to disable that "feature"?

Either install some other IP handler like Winzip, or use
regsvr32 /u zipfldr
to disable the association temporarily and
regsvr32 zipfldr
to re-enable it.

Reference: article by Ramesh

 

[dbabits]

You could just have some other ZIP archiving program, such as Winrar, Winzip
or other take over the ZIP by associating the ZIP with such program.

Pavel,
I have Winzip, this is not what i'm asking, i'm asking how to prevent
explorer from acting like winzip