Windows XP, which I’m forced to use at work at the moment, normally treats Zip files as though they were folders, letting you view their contents in explorer. Unfortunately there are a number of problems with this feature: it can kill the performance of Java based apps which work on the files (a Java bug), and it can mangle any files in the Zips with long names or long paths (a Windows bug).

All is not lost however, to disable this behaviour simple open up a command prompt and run the following command: regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll And, should you want to restore the original settings, just run the same command without the ‘u’ switch.