Automatic Unzip nuisance

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Moore
  • Start date Start date
D

David Moore

I'll start this post with a sigh:

Sigh.


There you go.


Right here's my problem. IE6 (and outlook express) appear to automatically
unzip .gz files when downloading from the internet. For example, I go to
webpage with a download in .gz format. I right-click the link and 'Save
As..', etc..... However, when I look at the downloaded file on my computer,
it has uncompresssed the file but leaves the '.gz' extension on it!!.

So how do I stop IE automatically decompressing (unzipping) the file?.

Ta,
Dave
 
David Moore said:
I'll start this post with a sigh:

Sigh.


There you go.


Right here's my problem. IE6 (and outlook express) appear to automatically
unzip .gz files when downloading from the internet. For example, I go to
webpage with a download in .gz format. I right-click the link and 'Save
As..', etc..... However, when I look at the downloaded file on my
computer, it has uncompresssed the file but leaves the '.gz' extension on
it!!.

So how do I stop IE automatically decompressing (unzipping) the file?.
Click to expand...



The zipfldr.dll library in Windows XP does not support .gz archive files.
You have something else doing that. "Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
come with a built-in zipper that makes WinZip apparently unnecessary. The
Compressed folder feature is a namespace extension that zips and unzips
files and folders in a pretty natural way. However, it only manages the .zip
format while WinZip supports several more formats including .rar, .arj, and
..gz"
(http://code-magazine.com/articleprint.aspx?quickid=0403051&printmode=true).

As a test, I downloaded a .gz file from
http://www.aarweb.org/fonts/default.asp (I don't know the site so don't
trust it except by your own choice; I just hunted around looking for .gz
downloads that weren't tar.gz downloads and found this page). The file did
not get uncompressed when saved to my hard drive. I also have WinZip
installed which supports .gz archives so it is possible behavior is
different for me. The .gz file got downloaded, it stayed as a .gz file, and
the WinZip icon is used for the file's icon and I can open it in WinZip (by
double-clicking on it).


You could disable Windows XP's ZIP compression support to see what happens;
see http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-202.
 
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