Don't you just love it, how even Windows Vista, the most advanced OS ever from Microsoft, can have Windows Explorer (WE) fall on its knees so easily and grind everything you are doing to a halt? Just by right-clicking on a zip file. Did I mention it cannot even log out or restart? Looks like the physical power button has more uses than it seems.
To be more specific, this was a zip file containing a copy Symantec Anti-virus which I downloaded from my company for use on a virtual Windows XP machine. The machine I used to download the file was operated by Windows Vista, and I intended to nip it from the virtual XP machine via network share. That's when time stopped. For both machines. Seriously, with WE hung, Windows is for most part as good as comatose. The absolute ease at we can cripple and disable operating systems continue to perturb me.
After a couple of successive trance and reboots, I theorized that the installed copy of SAV in this Vista machine was exceedingly curious and inquisitive of this zip file and decided to thorough inspect every cell and fibre. I took the liberty to rename its extension from .zip to .dat and volia, I was free to move it away with efficiency I should have had in the first place.
The take away: disable your anti-virus auto scanner when dealing with zip files container other anti-virus payloads.