Compressing files, folders, and programs decreases their size and reduces the amount of space they use on your drives or removable storage devices. Drive compression decreases the amount of space used by all of the files and folders stored on that drive.
Windows XP Search can get slow if you have a lot of compressed files on your hard drive. You can speed up your searches by disabling this.
To turn this feature back on:
Disable Search from Looking in ZIP Files
