Member Avatar for SRIVIJAYA

OS is the Windows vista starter. My friend sent me a zip compressed file comprising videos. So when I clicked open - it prompted me to choose which program I wanted to open the zipped file in. Since it was video files, I clicked on the Windows Media. Windows media could not recognize each file but I think reads it as a compressed file... so it gave me an error message.

Now every .zip files that I download (be it videos or not), I'm obliged to open it with windows media player. How do I revert back to the way it was where I would double click and see each file inside the zipped folder??

I think I need to change the "open with" program under the properties, but I don't know where/what the previous .zip file/program is...

PLEASE HELP. Thank you

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by aka_amboy
Member Avatar for OlyComputers

Right click and go to "open with" select the program and check the box to "always use this program", Vista should support ZIP natively, and hopefully that will show up in the list. If not I'd suggest downloading 7zip, it's a free program that handles pretty much any major compression format.

Member Avatar for stryker4526

Right click and go to "open with" select the program and check the box to "always use this program", Vista should support ZIP natively, and hopefully that will show up in the list. If not I'd suggest downloading 7zip, it's a free program that handles pretty much any major compression format.

Personally I prefer IZarc, but 7zip is also good.

As for OP: Windows natively supports .zip files (which are archives, NOT videos, that's why WMP won't recognize them), so it shouldn't have even asked you for a program to open it with... Are you sure they were .zips?

Edited by stryker4526 because: n/a
Member Avatar for aka_amboy

The proper way of opening EACH file in a zipped file is to extract them all first. After that, you can open each file with its corresponding application (i.e Word for .doc, Excel for .xls, Powerpoint for .pps, etc.) either by right-clicking and then choosing Open with... or by just double-clicking the file (the OS will just check what application matches the file you are trying to open).

It is possible to open a file directly from within the ZIP file itself. I do not recommend this since the OS will create temporary folder(s) and will use up memory resources for (1) the ZIP file, (2) the file you want to open, AND (3) the program that will be used to open the file.

Well, never mind if you have a large RAM (at least 2 GB) or a large swap file system (virtual memory management in XP)...

[

Cogito. Ergo, sum.]

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