Windows: Zipped Files

Not all 3rd party tools work the same especially for zipping and unzipping files.  We had an interesting case in which Inventor Viewer 2012 was not installing properly. The download can be found here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=16483583

Just a note that if you are using a 3rd party application to extract files, it may cause some problems with the installation.  This particular one was causing some file corruption.  Also, I would extract the file completely before running the setup.exe.

http://www.pkware.com/software/pkzip/windows/

In this scenario, the customer used this other 3rd party tool to extract, run and install the product.

http://www.izarc.org/

Typically, I normally use the Windows 7 built-in technologies to compress and extract files. 

• Select File > Right mouse click > Send to... > Compressed (Zipped) Folder
• Select File > Right mouse click > Extract All

Here is another interesting post/TS dealing with zip files, in this case, you need 'WinZip':

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/05/autocad-family-migration-custom-settings-file-zip-is-empty.html

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS14859214

Thanks to Tom Sack for confirming that certain utilities work better than others.