**This is a helpful fix for Windows Vista users.
In order to drag this little tip out, and make it somewhat interesting, I'll start straight from the beginning...
I was browsing online the other day, and came across some great templates for web designers. They were all in the "Stuffit" format, and for those of you who don't know that means they had an .sit extension and are typically used on MACs. But, there's a free utility out there that will help you unload the stuffit files on a PC as well. The software is free and can be downloaded online at Stuffit Expander unless you need the Deluxe version.
Anyway, so I very effortlessly download the software and use it to unload the stuffit files I found online that I needed. No problems, no hassles. The next day I downloaded some other .zip files from the web, which is something I do almost every day. Windows Vista and XP have a great little utility built in, where all you have to do is right-click and you can choose to "extract all" to compress and Uncompress Zip Files. The only problem is, when I went to extract these files, Windows no longer recognized the "zip" extension, and actually didn't even know how to handle the files. AHHH!!!
So, I try and find a solution, to no luck whatsoever. In fact, after reading this quote from MSFN.org forum:
"Theres a huge blunder here it seems, the ZIP file association is non-existent in Vistas default programs panel. The list of file associations does not include ZIP (at least with my V.Ultimate installation). And watch out if you associate a ZIP file thru a 3rd party compression app, i.e., WinRAR, IZarc, etc, theres no way to get back Windows default compression function (thru conventional means)! You cant use the 'open with' command because the compressed folder function in Vista is not thru some executable file that you can browse to to associate with!"
I was beginning to get scared! Luckily I found this great little tool for Windows Vista that restores some of these natural windows function using regedit. Even your avi, ico, bmp, jpg, basically all file extension fixes. I used the zip download and everything was fixed and back to normal! Check it out here: http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/105/1/
Anyway, Vista obviously has a problem here, and I was truly pissed off when I thought for a second there may not be an easy fix. Well, hope I helped someone out!
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