Microsoft added a valuable option in Windows XP (and later) which is the capability of OS to read, write, password protect zipped files. Now, whenever you installed WINXP, you can double click any ZIP files as if you are browsing normal folder to view its contents. In this article, I will try to introduce this functionality in little more technically.

Upon installing XP (and later versions), ‘Compressed (Zipped) Folder’ is enabled under New menu and Send To (%userProfile%\SendTo) menu. What you need is to right click any file(s) or folder(s) and click “Compressed (zipped) Folder” under Send To menu.

You can double click the zipped folder to view its contents and even password protect the archive. Inside zipped folder, right click and click “Add a Password” and confirm password and the files will be encrypted one by one (this takes little time). You can open or view any password protected zipped folder but you must provide password to open any file inside it.

Zipped folder is like normal folders, you can copy – paste – delete item(s) from and to archive and any other folder of your computer. You can decompress the contents by right clicking inside the folder and selecting “Extract All”.

Any file that you copied into the zipped folder after creating password would not be protected, you need to remove (right click inside it) and re-create password (time consuming :( )

In case you do not see the functionality under NEW menu or Send To menu and you are willing to use the Window’s zipped folder, click “Run…” of Start Menu (WinKey + R), type and press Enter:

                       regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

Then:               Rundll32 zipfldr.dll,RegisterSendto

Advantages:
+ It is built-in inside Windows.

+ It resembles with windows folder. You can see zipped folder inside folder tree as if it is a folder.

Disadvantages:

In fact, I did not find any advantages to stay with Windows Compressed (zipped) folder because:

- It is much slower in adding and decompressing (extracting) files.

- Password protection is not good enough for me as you can view file and folder names. Even, to protect newly added file I need to gone through the slow add password wizard.

- Its compression ratio is not so good.

If you would like to disable or uninstall the capability of Windows to manage and edit zip files, it is simple. In Start menu, click “Run…” and Enter: regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Of course, you can reinstall the option using regsvr32 zipfldr.dll and Rundll32 zipfldr.dll,RegisterSendto described in above section.

To me, it is far more better idea to kick off the Windows Compressed (zipped) Folder and stick with any third party compression utility (WinRAR is a pretty good solution with RAR archive which is really big brother of ZIP).

Thank you.