Recently, I had a need to create a self extracting zip archive, which will open on any windows machine. Because, I am using Linux, I did not want to go through the process of installing the windows with 7z on it just for a sake of creating that archive. I was expecting that the process will be not trivial, as some of internet resources show, but all turned out very simple. Peazip archiver available for Windows as well as Linux, which is able to create self extracting exe archive. I downloaded portable version for 64 bit machine and when creating a new archive you get an option to create self extracting file in a single volume or split by chosen size.
What I found, peazip creates small archives that extract under windows machine just fine. If you need to zip large amount of files say > 1 GB, I would suggest to create normal archive, which can span several files of set size and then use 7zip on windows computer to extract them.
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