I have Winzip on my PC. Until recently, when I downloaded a Daz3D free model and it came as an .EXE file, in my PC it displayed in my Windows Explorer with the Winzip icon, and Winzip could open it. But when I downloaded the recent Daz3D free violin model, both of its files (violin.exe (the model) and violinT.exe (the textures)) display with the "installation file" icon (a small picture of a desktop PC and an open box of floppies), and when I directly told WInzip to unzip each of the files, it said that it couldn't. What's happening??? Why is Daz3D insisting that we use their own installer program and not Winzip? What else does their installer program do??, such as some funny checking-about?

The first downloads of this free item were buggy. DAZ corrected this later, but if your download is from the first or second day, it is no good.
(Somebody said, it was a .sit-commpressed exe, renamed again to exe, which dosn't run on a PC. You can probably uncompess the file with Aladdin Stuffit Expander.)

I did run those installation-type .exe's on my PC, and they did install the violin model. So it was a valid model, but compressed in a way that forced me to run Daz3D's installer program. A suspicion remains. I still remember the firestorm that arose over Curious Labs's auto-checkup that they put in one of their programs.

I have the same problem, although I didn't install the violin yet. I don't recall what I did or installed but now my zips are showing .exe icons as well. There's no virus alert, I've scanned everything ... I dunno....

Open Windows Explorer, choose the option to change the icon assigned to a suffix type, reset it to what it should be. All the suffix icon assignations should then return together automatically to what they should be.

Here is a thing to try. Use an uninstaller program (I happen to prefer Norton) to monitor the installation of any suspect install programs. The uninstaller will log every entry made with the installer and you can see just exactly what went down. If you prefer you can then save the text file created and check all the registration entries if any.

Weird... I use Winzip too.. but all the freebies I ever got from DAZ came with the installer icon and are .exe files, not zip files. Have had no problem with the violin that I know of.