Compressed Windows 10

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Carmen Kalua

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:50:36 PM8/3/24

to vorcherstagtai

Hey guys im having a problem opening folders I have downloaded from dropbox. I have since deleted it from dropbox (so cant try reloading the files). I have tried opening it 3 on different computers and im getting the same message. I tried using both windows 7 and windows 8.1

How big is this Zip file? Dropbox is known to have problems creating Zip files larger than 1GB or so. If you're using the built-in Zip support that Windows has, I would try a program like WinRAR, 7Zip or WinZip. Otherwise you may be out of luck.

Same here. Only, my compressed folders are from 1 to 116 MB. Not very large... I can't open any of the files when extracted, all broken. Pictures, txt files, pdf files, html files, mp3 files, nothing opens...

A strange thing happed to me... I've kept the broken zip archives - and they all work now, four weeks later. I changed my OS in the meantime (Mint to Ubuntu) but I don't know if that made any difference... I tried extracting one file at a time and all at once and it works, no problems whatsoever. Maybe you should try extracting one file at a time from the broken archive or something like that, or change the OS xD

Thanks so much for this answer. It worked for me and i have recovered hundreds of photos from my travels. If you are ever in nz let me know and i will buy you a beer!

Big shout out to mactorque who sorted it for me since i can hardly even turn a Mac on!

Its crazy that dropbox was not able to help with this issue.

Before you posted this I managed to get in touch with dropbox customer support which took a bit of hunting! However they repeatedly told me the fault was my doing, didn't believe what was happening to me and offered no solution!

Thanks so much!

All the files on my desktop and every file I downloaded from the Internet have suddenly been compressed in Windows 10 (as indicated by two blue arrows on the top right of the icons). I have never set such a setting in Windows. Is this a virus or something else?

I noticed this happening after my upgrade to Windows 10 version 1809 (the October 2018 update) on my 32GB SSD. I usually save my documents in progress on my Desktop before moving them to their permanent locations, and I saw all of my new files getting the two blue arrows. Checking these files' advanced properties revealed that they are indeed being automatically compressed by Windows. None of the policy settings or registry settings to disable compression are preventing this. If I look at the properties for the whole C: drive it shows that automatic compression is off. But if I look at the advanced properties for C:\Users\myaccount\Desktop and C:\Users\myaccount\Documents I can see that they have been set to automatically compress files. If I uncheck this in the two folders (and choose to apply the change to all files and folders under these) then it does seem to stop this behavior, even after a restart.

I can not find documentation for Windows 10 version 1809 that describes the conditions under which Windows starts automatically compressing files without asking the user for permission to do this. It may have been necessary for the update to version 1809 to have enough space to complete the update, but at no point did Windows ASK me if this was OK. It just did it. Normally this would not bother me too much, but one of the identified flaws early in the release of version 1809 was that zipping of automatically compressed files (for example for the purpose of copying/upload files to other locations off of the computer) caused corruption in these files. So the Microsoft developers have obviously made mistakes in released code as far as compression goes.

I seem to recall a recent version of Mac OS X doing a similar thing in which it started encrypting files without asking after a particular update. This trend is not a good one. Again, at least if Windows had ASKED me before doing this then the sudden compression of my files would not have been a surprise requiring me to seek out answers on the Internet.

It seems that, indeed, Windows compresses files and folders when the hard drive is kinda full. Of my 128 GB SSD, I had around 15 GB left and it started compressing everything without asking, resulting in song projects getting corrupted and 100% losing them.
Thing is, it should always ask if you want the system to do this kind of things or you want to do it yourself or it can result in this kinds of situations where someone like me, has lost about a hundred hours of work.
That being said, I can't find where I could deactivate this or at least change the settings.

Also, any information anyone can share about how this functionality works (The shortcut seems to open Compressed (zipped) Folder.ZFSendToTarget, which appears to be 0 byte file?!), would be appreciated.

Create a dummy zip file on/in the destination drive/folder using the Windows built in "Send to/compressed (zipped) folder" functionality. I simply created one with a single line text file as zero length files are not supported by the Windows built in zipper.

And on installation be sure the option is checked to make it the default handler for zip which will make it the handler for that compress files function also. But what really makes this a good solution IMO is it includes several configurable context menu options, including one for compress to a folder in a set location.

Another more difficult option if you don't want to use 7zip might be to create a batch file to zip from the command line then move to the right location. Then add this bat file to the context menu manually.

The built-in compression utility is called "windows compressed folders" and is run using a very limited-functionality "zipfldr.dll" that does not include such capability as-is via rundll32.exe. However, there does seem to be a vbscript interface for it.

Also I should add that if you are looking to distribute an application or something like that without requiring a user to download another app, another possibility would be to include 7zip's dll as part of your own package, with the caveat that you'd need to adhere to the same gpl for your app.

The only issue is that compressed folders are extremely slow to open. You open a compressed (zipped) folder, and even browsing the files inside of it can take 5-30 seconds to respond. The rotating circle and NOT RESPONDING appear in the window. Same goes for opening the files inside it.

I realize this post is older and the system was restored to resolve but I struggled with this exact same compressed folders/zip issue for over 6 months and FINALLY found the issue to be with QuickAccess cache files. Google searches kept bringing me to this page so hopefully this will help someone else too.

I bet this also fixes a lot of other Windows Explorer (not responding) issues as I found this solution for a File Explorer crashes (not responding) when Preview Pane is on - Microsoft Community issue here:

What I noticed is that even though file compression is not turned on at the drive level (when I go to drive Properties "Compress drive to save disk space" is unchecked) a lot of files are still compressed on the disk seemingly at random. For example in "C:\Windows" folder about half of the files are compressed (appear blue in Windows Explorer and have "AC" attributes) and another half is not compressed.

Is there some other option (other than disc properties) where file compression is controlled? Can this attribute be changed by some process? I just don't think someone went through thousands of files on the disc and hand-picked them for compression.

In addition, when running the Disk Cleanup utility, the option to compress old files is just that, an option. If you don't want to compress old files as part of the cleanup then unselect the check box.

I was zipping the contents of my subversion sandbox using WinXP's inbuilt "Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder" capability and was surprised to find that the .zip file created did not contain the .svn directories and their contents.

So, isnt there a smart way to handle the problem? The real problem (show hidden files set to true. .svn folders are not compressed because windows does not consider them as valid folders) is still un-answered.

Send to zipped Folder does not traverse into folders without names before dot (like ".svn"). If you had other folders that begin with dots, those would not be included either. Files without names are not excluded. Hidden attribute does not come into play.

It may not include files that you normally wouldn't see. Or, the files may be there, but you may be unable to see them when reopening the .zip file in explorer, because they are hidden. You may go into Tools->Folder Options, go to the View tab, and select the radio button to view hidden files and folders.

"Send to --> Compressed (zipped) Folder" creates a zip file. What it puts in there is based on your settings. It does not include hidden files with the default settings. If you have your explorer view settings set as Kibbee mentioned to "Show hidden files and folders", then "Send to --> Compressed (zipped) Folder" will put the hidden files into the zip file.

Currently Chia/MMX compressed plots will only work properly on Flexpool. Max has been using us since September and several changes were needed to properly support them. The major one being self-adjustable difficulty. You may notice issues on other pools. On the bright side, we have a 0.7% fee which is lower than most pools.

Well for compressed plots it really becomes relevant if you can do better per a plot which is the plan. Max and Alex have both said its doable as FF has better code. So less power and resource use per plot means more plots farmed for the same hardware or a higher compression.

Every time we had a similar exchange, it ended up either with you stating that you have no clue about the technical side or telling me to see psychiatrist as you had no more bullets. So, thank you, but I will pass on this nonsense you just brought up, as again all that is way over your head.