the zip file itself might also be generated (you can just tack random garbage into places in the zip format and it’ll be ignored - which is extremely quick to do), in which case the hash would change… the file itself is important in case it’s an exploit in the unzip program itself, but also the contents of the file is important
not entirely true. if the file downloaded, windows does a bunch of “helpful” things with files… these are almost certainly benign (eg rendering thumbnails, getting metadata about certain file types) but almost anything is potentially exploitable (eg overflow in thumbnail generation code could lead to code execution just from browsing a website and then opening your downloads folder in explorer)
drive-by attacks don’t just effect the browser
with that said, it’d be a huge deal if this was the reality of the situation… it’s highly unlikely, but zero days exist, and the possibility is always real
i say this because this has been exploited in the past with exactly the same scenario: preview generation
i’d also add: disk recovery programs exist
but if you don’t know what - specifically - you’re doing stay away
disk recovery catches desperate people willing to download and run random crap from the internet
unless you know how to search for a tool that does a specific job, you will almost certainly make everything worse by getting yourself malware too
(and in the best case you do find one of the legit tools, they aren’t magic: some recovery operations on drives can be destructive when used wrong… you’re twiddling with data that isn’t meant to be twiddled with in normal operation after all)