"File Not Found or No Read Permission" Zipping Problem

I love that in Windows XP you can right click on any file and Send To> Compressed (zipped) Folder. For most users, that functionality freed us from having use to use shareware programs like WinZip that clogged our registries to no end. In fact, it's still my preferred method of working on zip files, only resorting to using the freeware program 7-Zip when I specifically need to archive to or extract non-zip files.

However, early this morning as I was preparing to deliver some HD Quicktimes to a client, I ran into a problem using Windows' zipper: it seems it can't handle files larger than, say, 2 gigabytes (and half of my files were over 3). It was throwing me the error message

File not found or no read permission

I tried a workaround of creating an empty zip file first (Right Click>New>Compressed Archive), and then dragging the large file in. No luck, it still threw up the error. A quick look on google showed lots of other people having the same problem, and no solution.

Well, as much as I'd love to tell you of an awesome registry tweak or hack for this, I can't. It really seems that Windows has an uncrossable barrier when it comes to zipping files larger than around 2 gigs. However, I did notice that I could use 7-zip to archive the file, and it worked like a charm. It involves a few more steps than using Windows itself, so I still would recommend using Windows' zip for small files, but with impossibly large ones, use 7-zip.

p.s. - For ways to edit your "Send To" right click entries, check out this earlier post.