I have registered versions of winrar and powerarchiver. Powerarchiver is IMO a crock with little depth, good for a couple of files here and there and for supporting many algorithms but not for heavy duty work.
The best zip utility for me is command line: info-zip's zip and unzip http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/Zip.html which I use with my fav windows file manager http://www.fileviewer.com/ for zipping using a custom menu item. View and unzip being built in (for rar too).

pcmag can shove their download subscription right up their khyber pass.
Actually I do have the old startup cop from pcmag. It's okay but I doubt the database was ever updated. The new version has been roundly slated as junk though I have no personal experience.
As for sysinternals... well I mentioned them at the start  ::)

I'm inclined to think there aren't any gems out there and we've actually already covered anything worth contemplating apart from some suites which have these sort of utilities... jv16, ace utils...

thanks, I'll look into it.