How do I stop SEARCH from looking in my ZIP file archives

[Rick]

When I search for a file name in XP, the search looks inside all my
ZIP files. I search the whole drive for files quite a bit because I
forget where I put things. The search takes longer to complete with
the additional time required to open the ZIPs and look inside; it even
expands the password protected ZIPs.

[[email protected]]

You could disable WinXP from handling ZIP files at all (no "zip folders").
This also gets rid of the big delay that happens when you navigate into a
directory containing lots of zip files with lots of files in them.
You might then want to get some other program for handling zip files, like
Winzip (there are many others, too).

To disable zip folders:
regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

To re-enable zip folders:
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll


Or, instead of using the "cute doggy" search, you could do your search by
doing something like the following in a CMD window:

dir/s/p/b c:\filenametosearchfor

(you can put another path to seach instead of the c:\, and can put wildcards
into the filenametosearchfor)


If you also want to search for things (text) _inside_ of files, you may want
to find a port of the "grep" command that you can run in a command window.


In article >, Rick
> wrote:
|When I search for a file name in XP, the search looks inside all my
|ZIP files. I search the whole drive for files quite a bit because I
|forget where I put things. The search takes longer to complete with
|the additional time required to open the ZIPs and look inside; it even
|expands the password protected ZIPs.
|

[Big Mac]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:43:20 GMT, wrote:

>You could disable WinXP from handling ZIP files at all (no "zip folders").
>This also gets rid of the big delay that happens when you navigate into a
>directory containing lots of zip files with lots of files in them.
>You might then want to get some other program for handling zip files, like
>Winzip (there are many others, too).

If anyone is going to get another ZIP handling program, which I
recommend they do, try "ZipGenius". It is freeware, and it handles
many many other types of archiving formats in case you even come
across anything else. I think the popular WinZip is shareware and
not freeware, and I have tried it and it is fine, but this freeware
ZipGenius works great too

Big Mac.