How to Make Windows Explorer Open Large Archives

Zip files as the name suggests are compressed files that are meant to reduce the space problem if you are trying to share a large file over the internet. Windows XP and Windows Vista both have an inbuilt zip application that allows the user to compress large files and save tremendous amount of space depending on the content of the file. Although, Microsoft tried to make XP and Vista user friendly but I am sorry to say, they failed. For example, the build in archive manager fails tremendously when dealing with large zips. It seems that Microsoft specialists never thought that we might actually have something big stored on our hard drives. It's just like they thought the only ZIPs we will handle will be the mail attachments we might receive.

When they included the feature that allows you to brows through archives, they thought that this way they will get rid of the delay in opening an archive. The difference between Vista and XP from this point of view is that XP creates the list of files after the archive has been opened, while Vista attempts to make a quick list before you open it. It works pretty fast actually, until it knocks itself dead with a large archive, causing the entire system to freeze.

So, the zip manager seems pretty pointless if you know you will have big archives stored on your hard drive. The best way is to attempt to turn it off.

First of all, download and install the ShellEx application from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html. If you are unable to download the application from this website, you can search for the same on Google. After you have downloaded the application, Right-click on ShellEx file and click "Run as Administrator" to access it fully. There you will find a list as below of "Compressed" stuff. Select all those in your left; right click them to get rid of them.

After selecting the explorer, click "End Process" and confirm the changes in the next dialog box. The Taskbar will disappear, along with all of your file explorer windows.

In order to confirm the changes you will have to reboot the operating system. So save all your work, restart the windows and enjoy the old fashioned WinZip way of handling archives.

If you don't want to waste the time restarting windows, you can press Ctrl + Alt + Del keys together to open the 'Task Manager' window. From the Taskbar window, end the process titled "explorer.exe". Your window will disappear, now click the 'File Menu' of the task manager and finally click 'New(Run)'. Type explorer.exe and everything will return to normal.