I find the Windows shareware and nagware tools for Gzip and Tarball files lacking. Some of it is adding unnecessary clutter to my OS. Part of it is compatibility with 64-bit Windows Server 2003. I also do not want to pay for a feature that I rarely use. Since I run Cygwin, it is easy enough to drop into the Bash shell to unzip and untar.

Copy the file to the Cygwin home folder (C:\cygwin\home\Administrator). Then start Cygwin and run the commands to unzip and untar.

$ gzip –d file.tar.gz

$ tar –xvf file.tar

The expanded files will then be in a folder called C:\cygwin\home\Administrator\file.