What is 7z SFX Warning? Insufficient Physical Memory, Extracting may Take a Long Time

If you received a 7z SFX warning dialog box in your Windows device containing a message about insufficient physical memory and you are wondering which application displayed the dialog box, this article will help you. In this article, we’ll discus whether the 7z SFX warning box is displayed by a virus or malware or is it a genuine warning box displayed by Windows.

Suspicious 7z SFX Warning Dialog Box Appeared on Windows Desktop

Yesterday while working on my Windows 11 device, a suspicious dialog box appeared on my computer screen.

The title of the dialog box was set as “7z SFX: warning” and it contained following information:

The dialog box contained an exclamation (!) mark icon inside a triangle with yellow background which was indicating that it was a warning or critical alert message.

The warning box contained 2 buttons: Yes and No to select.

Following screenshot shows the 7z SFX warning dialog box appearing on Windows:

I was surprised to see the dialog box as I was not installing any software or extracting any ZIP/RAR/7z file. At first sight, the dialog box looked suspicious to me.

Opera Automatic Update Installer Displays 7z SFX Warning Box in Windows

With the help of some troubleshooting and Task Manager, I was able to find the culprit behind this strange warning box.

It was Opera web browser which was showing the 7z SFX warning box in Windows. Let’s discuss in details!

Almost all web browsers use a background process or executable to automatically update the application to latest version. Opera also uses opera_autoupdate.exe service to regularly check for new versions of the web browser. When it finds a new version available, it downloads the setup files and installs/upgrades the existing version to the latest version in user’s device.

Opera downloads the new version’s setup files in archive or compressed format and after downloading, the updater extracts the installer in TEMP folder. Sometimes during extracting the installer, you might receive the above mentioned 7z SFX warning box. It happens because Opera uses self extracting archive of the installer created by 7-Zip program.

You can click on “Yes” button to allow Opera updater to install the latest version of Opera web browser in your system.

Next time if you receive this warning box and you have installed any version of Opera web browser such as Stable, Beta, Developer or Opera GX, you can safely click on yes button.

How to Investigate Which Application is Showing 7z SFX Warning Box?

Here is how I investigated and found the culprit program behind the strange 7z SFX warning box in my computer system. You can also follow the same steps to find the problematic application in your computer if you also face similar issue.

When the warning box appears, right-click on its Taskbar shortcut button and Windows will display the application name at the top of the jumplist as shown in following screenshot:

You can see in above screenshot, “Opera installer SFX” is clearly visible on jumplist.

To find the exact executable name and path, right-click on the application name present on the jumplist and select Properties option as shown in following screenshot:

It’ll open the application properties box which will provide you full information about the software program which is showing 7z SFX warning box. You can see in following screenshot that the 7z warning properties box is clearly showing Opera AutoUpdate exe name and its full path:

If you don’t have Opera web browser installed in your computer and still get the warning box, you can take help of Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) tool and above mentioned steps to investigate the issue.

Also Check:

[Tip] How to Disable or Block Auto-Update Feature (Opera_AutoUpdate.exe) in Opera

How to Disable or Remove MicrosoftEdgeUpdate.exe Process Running in Task Manager?

How to Disable or Remove GoogleUpdate.exe Background Process in Windows?