Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Fixing send to compressed zip in Vista

Today I was being my usual foolish self, and I went to the properties of the Send to Compressed folder FYI in Vista this is stored in:
C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo


I then changed the default program that is used, which essentially destroyed my ability to send right a compressed folder. I found it interesting that the command dropped off of my send to menu.

After digging around google and not finding anything to help me, I decided to scour the registry myself. I assume you know how to edit the registry otherwise you shouldn't be messing with the registry.

In the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive is a section which stores the file associations that a user has made. The Send to Compressed file is stored as .ZFSendToTarget and is located here:
HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/FileExts/.ZFSendToTargets


There are a couple keys here which are important:

  • OpenWithList - This drives the Open With menu you see when you right click a file. The values it contains are all the options in the Open With menu.

  • OpenWithProgIds - I am not positive on the role of this, but it contains a CLSID which points to the zipFldr.dll Search the registry for the key here and you will see what I mean. Based on how modifying the keys affected my system this looks like a default as long as the next key has not been created

  • UserChoice - This contains ProgId for the application I choose to use for this file type



  • Resolving this issue was very simple. Delete the UserChoice key and your Send to Compressed File option will again work.

    Hopefully your not as foolish as I was and change this in the first place, but in case you do this is a really easy fix.

    Josh

    1 comment:

    Alex said...

    Once my friend told me story about his zip files. He couldn't restore theirs. Unfortunately yesterday I was in similar condition. I used the Google and noticed an interesting blog. To my surprise I found out - zip file fix there. It finished my problems quite easy and beautiful:)