You dont need an paid utility like WinZip or WinRar to compress/decompress majority of file-compression formats out there, there are plenty of better free and open-source alternatives available like - PeaZip, a free file and archive manager that runs on almost any version of Windows (even 9x) and Linux and includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format (130+ file types). This application is based on the solid and high performance Open Source technology of 7-Zip and other equally great Open Source projects (like FreeARC, PAQ, UPX...), providing a natively portable and cross-platform unified GUI localized in over 20 languages.
The pleasant and simple to use UI offers a wide array of advanced features, especially focused on security, as strong encryption, two factor authentication, encrypted password manager, secure deletion, calculate hash and checksums etc. An unique trait of PeaZip is the innovative interface to handle archives, that provides a full featured file manager component to check and update items set for compression, or conversion, or extraction.