Why does unzipping files take so long?

I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked to
extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2 hours
to extract all the files!

After waiting for 20 minutes I aborted and used the cygwin.com free unzip
program which unziped everything in a couple of minutes. Why is the vista
program for zip files so slow? Is there anything we can do do speed it up?
Thanks,
Siegfried

Vista has lots of problems. Wait until SP1 has been finalized and it might
get better. I had problems copying data files from one drive to a USB
drive. Took 4 times as long on Vista than XP.


"Siegfried Heintze" <siegfried@heintze.com> wrote in message
news:Oi72$9U1HHA.3768@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
>browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
>opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked to
>extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2 hours
>to extract all the files!
>
> After waiting for 20 minutes I aborted and used the cygwin.com free unzip
> program which unziped everything in a couple of minutes. Why is the vista
> program for zip files so slow? Is there anything we can do do speed it up?
> Thanks,
> Siegfried
>

>I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
>browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
>opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked to
>extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2 hours
>to extract all the files!

I can't repro this problem.

I downloaded eclipse-SDK-3.3-win32.zip, 140MB, containing 1,831 items.

In Explorer I dragged and dropped the contents from a zip file to an
unzipped folder, which took 2 minutes 11 seconds.

This is on 64 bit Vista, with a 2.4GHx Core 2 Duo processor and 3Gb of RAM,
and a 10,000 rpm Western Digital Raptor SATA drive; Windows Performance
Rating 5.2.

There are many, many variables which could affect performance - CPU, other
background processes, anti-virus, filter drivers, disk IO, available memory,
etc etc.

You may be seeing a genuine problem; and I'm not suggesting Windows built-in
zip is super-efficient - it probably isn't the fastest. But, the problem
you're seeing is not universal. In many situations, the zip performance in
Vista seems to be quite acceptable.

You'd probably need to run some tests on your machine to see where the
bottleneck was with that particular operation - use Perfom and add counters
for CPU processor time, memory pages/sec, Physical disk queue length, etc.

Regards,
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? I have a new machine with
2GB RAM, a very fast processor, but even with antivirus turned off and
nothing else running, extracting , say, a 10MB zip file takes over 40
minutes! The transfer rate is 4k/s, so it would actually be quicker to
download the files from a dial-up modem then extract them from a zip file on
my machine!

"Andrew McLaren" wrote:

> >I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
> >browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
> >opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked to
> >extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2 hours
> >to extract all the files!
>
> I can't repro this problem.
>
> I downloaded eclipse-SDK-3.3-win32.zip, 140MB, containing 1,831 items.
>
> In Explorer I dragged and dropped the contents from a zip file to an
> unzipped folder, which took 2 minutes 11 seconds.
>
> This is on 64 bit Vista, with a 2.4GHx Core 2 Duo processor and 3Gb of RAM,
> and a 10,000 rpm Western Digital Raptor SATA drive; Windows Performance
> Rating 5.2.
>
> There are many, many variables which could affect performance - CPU, other
> background processes, anti-virus, filter drivers, disk IO, available memory,
> etc etc.
>
> You may be seeing a genuine problem; and I'm not suggesting Windows built-in
> zip is super-efficient - it probably isn't the fastest. But, the problem
> you're seeing is not universal. In many situations, the zip performance in
> Vista seems to be quite acceptable.
>
> You'd probably need to run some tests on your machine to see where the
> bottleneck was with that particular operation - use Perfom and add counters
> for CPU processor time, memory pages/sec, Physical disk queue length, etc.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Andrew McLaren
> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au
>
>
>

"obscurereference" <obscurereference@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote ...
> Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? I have a new machine with
> 2GB RAM, a very fast processor, but even with antivirus turned off and
> nothing else running, extracting , say, a 10MB zip file takes over 40
> minutes! The transfer rate is 4k/s, so it would actually be quicker to
> download the files from a dial-up modem then extract them from a zip file
> on
> my machine!

Although you are undoubtedly seeing a problem, it is not the universal
experience for all Vista users. There is some specific or local condition
which is causing the slow performance you are seeing.

I have plenty of gripes about Vista; but speed unzipping files, is not one
of them - I can unzip quite large zip files, nice and quick on my main
machine. As I said:

>> There are many, many variables which could affect performance - CPU,
>> other
>> background processes, anti-virus, filter drivers, disk IO, available
>> memory,
>> etc etc.
>> You'd probably need to run some tests on your machine to see where the
>> bottleneck was with that particular operation - use Perfom and add
>> counters
>> for CPU processor time, memory pages/sec, Physical disk queue length,
>> etc.

Start by playing around with Perfom, and see if you can delineate the main
parameters of the slow performance.

Other folks might have better ideas, hope this helps a bit.
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

obscurereference wrote:
> Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? I have a new machine
> with 2GB RAM, a very fast processor, but even with antivirus turned
> off and nothing else running, extracting , say, a 10MB zip file takes
> over 40 minutes! The transfer rate is 4k/s, so it would actually be
> quicker to download the files from a dial-up modem then extract them
> from a zip file on my machine!

Turn off your virus checker. Does that make a difference?

Turning off Remote Differential Compression (Control
Panel->Programs->Programs and Features->Turn windows features on or
off>Unheck 'remote differential compression') helped a lot for me, it's
still not quite as fast as I think it should be though. I think I heard
of a problem with the 'calculating time remaining' part of file
transfers that made it take a while to start but that was patched.


--
pxmm

I ran into this back in January with my Vista Home Premium X32 install
on my wife's Dell E520. I rolled her back to XP MCE2005, but I'm getting
ready to give the Vista install a shot again.

I have not experienced this with Vista Business x64, if anything,
operations of that nature feel faster for me. Using Windows built in
compression or 7-zip has been very snappy.


--
bob_c_b

I had the same problem, so I ditched Microsoft in favor of WinRAR. No
problems since.


"obscurereference" <obscurereference@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:8CECD951-2BC4-46DF-A20F-5E402EE958B2@microsoft.com...
> Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? I have a new machine with
> 2GB RAM, a very fast processor, but even with antivirus turned off and
> nothing else running, extracting , say, a 10MB zip file takes over 40
> minutes! The transfer rate is 4k/s, so it would actually be quicker to
> download the files from a dial-up modem then extract them from a zip file
> on
> my machine!
>
> "Andrew McLaren" wrote:
>
>> >I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
>> >browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
>> >opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked to
>> >extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2
>> >hours
>> >to extract all the files!
>>
>> I can't repro this problem.
>>
>> I downloaded eclipse-SDK-3.3-win32.zip, 140MB, containing 1,831 items.
>>
>> In Explorer I dragged and dropped the contents from a zip file to an
>> unzipped folder, which took 2 minutes 11 seconds.
>>
>> This is on 64 bit Vista, with a 2.4GHx Core 2 Duo processor and 3Gb of
>> RAM,
>> and a 10,000 rpm Western Digital Raptor SATA drive; Windows Performance
>> Rating 5.2.
>>
>> There are many, many variables which could affect performance - CPU,
>> other
>> background processes, anti-virus, filter drivers, disk IO, available
>> memory,
>> etc etc.
>>
>> You may be seeing a genuine problem; and I'm not suggesting Windows
>> built-in
>> zip is super-efficient - it probably isn't the fastest. But, the problem
>> you're seeing is not universal. In many situations, the zip performance
>> in
>> Vista seems to be quite acceptable.
>>
>> You'd probably need to run some tests on your machine to see where the
>> bottleneck was with that particular operation - use Perfom and add
>> counters
>> for CPU processor time, memory pages/sec, Physical disk queue length,
>> etc.
>>
>> Regards,
>> --
>> Andrew McLaren
>> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au
>>
>>
>>

i have to say it took Vista nearly an hour to extract the data files off my
old machine

i wonder whether it has anything to do with Vista indexing the extracted
files one-by-one (which might not be the case if Winrar extracts them)


"Gareth" <pendlebury@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:OG0wA6W%23HHA.4612@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>I had the same problem, so I ditched Microsoft in favor of WinRAR. No
>problems since.
>
>
> "obscurereference" <obscurereference@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:8CECD951-2BC4-46DF-A20F-5E402EE958B2@microsoft.com...
>> Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? I have a new machine
>> with
>> 2GB RAM, a very fast processor, but even with antivirus turned off and
>> nothing else running, extracting , say, a 10MB zip file takes over 40
>> minutes! The transfer rate is 4k/s, so it would actually be quicker to
>> download the files from a dial-up modem then extract them from a zip file
>> on
>> my machine!
>>
>> "Andrew McLaren" wrote:
>>
>>> >I downloaded a 150 MB zip file from http://eclipse.org with the firefox
>>> >browser on a new notebook (I'm hoping there is no adware on it yet!). I
>>> >opened up a windows explorer window on the zip file and right clicked
>>> >to
>>> >extract the files. I got a dialog box and it said it would require 2
>>> >hours
>>> >to extract all the files!
>>>
>>> I can't repro this problem.
>>>
>>> I downloaded eclipse-SDK-3.3-win32.zip, 140MB, containing 1,831 items.
>>>
>>> In Explorer I dragged and dropped the contents from a zip file to an
>>> unzipped folder, which took 2 minutes 11 seconds.
>>>
>>> This is on 64 bit Vista, with a 2.4GHx Core 2 Duo processor and 3Gb of
>>> RAM,
>>> and a 10,000 rpm Western Digital Raptor SATA drive; Windows Performance
>>> Rating 5.2.
>>>
>>> There are many, many variables which could affect performance - CPU,
>>> other
>>> background processes, anti-virus, filter drivers, disk IO, available
>>> memory,
>>> etc etc.
>>>
>>> You may be seeing a genuine problem; and I'm not suggesting Windows
>>> built-in
>>> zip is super-efficient - it probably isn't the fastest. But, the problem
>>> you're seeing is not universal. In many situations, the zip performance
>>> in
>>> Vista seems to be quite acceptable.
>>>
>>> You'd probably need to run some tests on your machine to see where the
>>> bottleneck was with that particular operation - use Perfom and add
>>> counters
>>> for CPU processor time, memory pages/sec, Physical disk queue length,
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> --
>>> Andrew McLaren
>>> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au
>>>
>>>
>>>
>