File compression / Zip error: Couldn’t communicate with a helper application

I have successfully used the Compress function on a number of files recently, but have encountered a problem doing it with two large ones. (One of these is a folder containing several files.) The process starts and seems to go smoothly for a some hours, but then failed with this Zip error message: "Couldn’t communicate with a helper application."

Help! Any suggestions on how to address this problem? The file is a little under 90GB in size.