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