7-zip won't show up in right click menu

[stevcast]

I was wondering if anybody in the Orbiter community could help me. I've looked all over the internet and I've had trouble finding a solution to this problem which is: I recently upgraded to a new faster computer, which has Vista as it's OS. I downloaded all of my files from my old computer to the new one and everything seemed to be working great.
Then I downloaded a copy of the 7-zip file manager and tested it and it was also working . The next day, I was working on Orbiter and I opened the right click menu to access 7-zip to open a file, and it wasn't there.
I tried everything I could think of to get it to work, but it just won't show up in the required right click menu. I've downloaded four different versions of the program, and none of them would show up in the menu.
The only solution that I can find is to add a command line in my computer's registry to add the 7-zip program back into the right click menu (but I get real nervous about "fixing" anything in my computer's operating files, especially since I basically wing it most of the time).
I log into my computer as the administrator, and I did read that if you run the 7-zip program as administrator on a file, it may cause the entry to be deleated from the right click menu (If this is the case, how would you fix it?).
If there is anybody that has had the same problem, and found a solution, I would really appreciate your help!!!!

Thanks in Advance,

Stevcast

 

[Oceanic]

open 7zip go to tools>options>7-zip and make sure "integrate 7-zip to shell context menu" is checked

 

[stevcast]

Oceanic,
I can't open 7-zip at all. Its in my program files(x86), and I can go to "computer" and open the downloaded file in the data base but how do I access the program itself? When I had it installed on my other computer with Windows XP, I downloaded it, and it was automatically on my right click menu (all I had to do was point at a file and click).
Now I have Vista, and I feel like I'm starting all over again(just when I was getting dangerous with a keyboard). I tried manually entering 7-zip into the computer registry as per instructions off of the internet, but nothing worked. I've tried running it as administrator, and that didn't work, and now I can't get the "run as administrator" icons off of the 7-zip installers, even though I've unchecked the appropriate boxes .
I'm really not computer savy, so if you could think of anything I can try, and walk me through it step by step, I would greatly appreciate it!!!!!

Sincerely,


Stevcast

 

[Oceanic]

take a look at your start menu>all programs a shortcut to 7-zip should be somewhere there. or if you have a .zip, .rar or .7z file somewhere right click the file and choose "open with..." if "open with" is not available hold shift while right clicking.

if this still doesn't work, try searching manually for "7zFM.exe"

the last resort would be to uninstall 7-zip and install it again, if you running a x64 bit vista version make sure you install this version