# how to compress files?



## ainstushar (Nov 21, 2005)

do you know a way to compress files using ms dos, without any external third party tool?

like i tried to use the comrpess command, but it doesn't change file size. 

i know that you can expand files like whatever.dl_ into whatever.dll with 900% increase (the dos says that).

those files can be found on xp installation disk.

so please tell me a comand so that it will compress files. w/o downloading any other app.


----------



## Chicon (Jul 29, 2004)

Hi ainstushar,

Welcome to TSG ! 

You should use PKZIP25 (downloadable from http://www.bychoice.com/pkware.htm ) !

How to you use PKZIP : http://www.uwm.edu/~dtoth/pkzip.html

You may run the software within a batch file.


----------



## ainstushar (Nov 21, 2005)

see my question says that i need soething that compresses files without any downloads!!! 

So giveme a command that does my work.


----------



## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

you can go into file properties, click on Advanced, and check Compress contents to save space, then click OK. This will compress it on the file level.
you can do the same with folders.
though, i don't know how good this is compared to PKZIP or WINZIP or any of the other compression software.


----------



## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

In W-XP ...Right click on the file/folder (or files/folders) ... then Choose - Send To > Compressed (zipped)folder.


----------



## ainstushar (Nov 21, 2005)

i already know how to compress files using winzip. again pkzip is not an option(b/c it requires a seperate download) right clicking does not compresses the file, it only turns them into blue color. and when i run disk cleanup, if those files are old, windows will delete them. its the same thing as compress [filename].

Thx for the help but not good enough:
i need something that does the opposite of expand command in cmd. check for xp installation disk for those fiels, use expand filename filenamew/o the dash.

Need a command line command!!


----------



## cristobal03 (Aug 5, 2005)

Hey there, welcome to TSG.

The answer is, there isn't one. Unless you download a third-party utility, even a command-line utility, there's no way to compress or archive a file using cmd.exe or DOS. There are some GPL utilities that'll probably do it, but you'll have to download them or acquire them somehow.

GL

chris.


----------



## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

i guess i don't understand what the disk cleanup has to do with wanting to compress a file. if a file is old, it's old.. no matter what you do to it. a command line compression would compress the file, but it will eventually get old too.


----------



## blaqDeaph (Nov 22, 2005)

The short answer: no.

Without downloading 3rd party utilities, you can't do it from the command prompt, or even in MS DOS for that matter. Remember, MS DOS is simply a 92kb, command line interpreter. It comes with other programs like fdisk.exe or format.exe, but basically, unless you use a command line utility like PKZIP, you can't do it from MS DOS, and you can't do it from Windows' CMD.exe either.


----------

