Extract MSI from EXE

Question

I want to extract the MSI of an EXE setup to publish over a network   For example  using Universal Extractor  but it doesn t work for Java Runtime Environment

User · Answer

Starting with parameter   setup exe  A   asks for saving included files  including MSI    This may depend on the software which created the setup exe

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Quick List  There are a number of common types of setup exe files  Here are some of them in a  short-list   More fleshed-out details here    towards bottom     Setup exe Extract   various flavors to try    setup exe  a setup exe  s  extract all setup exe  s  extract all  path  setup exe  stage only setup exe  extract  C  My work  setup exe  x setup exe  x  path  setup exe  s  x  b C  FolderInWhichMSIWillBeExtracted   v  qn   dark exe -x outputfolder setup exe    dark exe is a WiX binary - install WiX to extract a WiX setup exe  as of now   More  section 4    There is always    setup exe        Real-world  pragmatic Installshield setup exe extraction  Installshield  Setup exe and Update exe Command-Line Parameters  Installshield setup exe commands  sample  Wise setup exe commands Advanced Installer setup exe commands    MSI Extract  msiexec exe   File msi extraction     msiexec  a File msi  msiexec  a File msi TARGETDIR C  MyInstallPoint  qn     msiexec exe command lines  Microsoft s msiexec exe documentation on MSDN      Many Setup Tools  It is impossible to cover all the different kinds of possible setup exe files  They might feature all kinds of different command line switches  There are so many possible tools that can be used   non-MSI MSI  admin-tools  multi-platform  etc       NSIS   Inno  Commmon  free tools such as Inno Setup seem to make extraction hard  unofficial unpacker  not tried by me  run by virustotal com   Whereas NSIS seems to use regular archives that standard archive software  7-zip et al  can open and extract      General Tricks  One trick is to launch the setup exe and look in the 1  system s temp folder for extracted files    Another trick is to use 2  7-Zip  WinRAR  WinZip or similar   archive tools to see if they can read the format  Some claim success   by 3  opening the setup exe in Visual Studio  Not a technique   I use  4  And there is obviously application repackaging -   capturing the changes done to a computer after a setup has run and   clean it up - requires a special tool  most of the free ones   come and go  Advanced Installer Architect and AdminStudio are big   players          UPDATE  A quick presentation of various deployment tools used to create   installers    How to create windows installer  comprehensive links        And a simpler list view of the most used development tools as of now  2018   for quicker reading and overview       And for safekeeping          Create MSI from extracted setup files  towards bottom    Regarding silent installation using Setup exe generated using Installshield 2013   issuite  project file  different kinds of Installshield setup exe files    What is the purpose of administrative installation initiated using msiexec  a          Just a disclaimer  A setup exe file can contain an embedded MSI  it can be a legacy style  non-MSI  installer or it can be just a regular executable with no means of extraction whatsoever  The  discussion  below first presents the use of admin images for MSI files and how to extract MSI files from setup exe files  Then it provides some links to handle other types of setup exe files   Also see the comments section   UPDATE  a few sections have now been added directly below  before the description of MSI file extract using administrative installation  Most significantly a blurb about extracting WiX setup exe bundles  new kid on the block   Remember that a  last resort  to find extracted setup files  is to launch the installer and then look for extracted files in the temp folder  Hold down Windows Key  tap R  type  temp  or  tmp  and hit Enter  - try the other options first though - for reliability reasons   Apologies for the  generalized mess  with all this heavy inter-linking  I do believe that you will find what you need if you dig enough in the links  but the content should really be cleaned up and organized better   General links     General links for handling different kinds of setup exe files  towards bottom   Uninstall and Install App on my Computer silently  generic  but focus on silent uninstall   Similar description of setup exe files  link for safekeeping - see links to deployment tools   A description of different flavors of Installshield setup exe files  extraction  silent running  etc     Wise setup exe switches  Wise is no longer on the market  but many setup exe files remain     Extract content    Extract WiX Burn-built setup exe  a bit down the page  - also see section directly below  Programmatically extract contents of InstallShield setup exe  Installshield     Vendor links     Advanced Installer setup exe files  Installshield setup exe files  Installshield suite setup exe files      WiX Toolkit  amp  Burn Bundles  setup exe files   Tech Note  The WiX toolkit now delivers setup exe files built with the bootstrapper tool Burn that you need the toolkit s own dark exe decompiler to extract  Burn is used to build setup exe files that can install several embedded MSI or executables in a specified sequence  Here is a sample extraction command   dark exe -x outputfolder MySetup exe   Before you can run such an extraction  some prerequisite steps are required    Download and install the WiX toolkit  linking to a previous answer with some extra context information on WiX - as well as the download link   After installing WiX  just open a command prompt  CD to the folder where the setup exe resides  Then specify the above command and press Enter The output folder will contain a couple of sub-folders containing both extracted MSI and EXE files and manifests and resource file for the Burn GUI  if any existed in the setup exe file in the first place of course   You can now  in turn  extract the contents of the extracted MSI files  or EXE files   For an MSI that would mean running an admin install - as described below      There is built-in MSI support for file extraction  admin install   MSI or Windows Installer has built-in support for this - the extraction of files from an MSI file  This is called an administrative installation  It is basically intended as a way to create a network installation point from which the install can be run on many target computers  This ensures that the source files are always available for any repair operations   Note that running an admin install versus using a zip tool to extract the files is very different  The latter will not adjust the media layout of the media table so that the package is set to use external source files - which is the correct way  Always prefer to run the actual admin install over any hacky zip extractions  As to compression  there are  actually three different compression algorithms used for the cab files inside the MSI file format  MSZip  LZX  and Storing  uncompressed   All of these are handled correctly by doing an admin install   Important   Windows Installer caches installed MSI files on the system for repair  modify and uninstall scenarios  Starting with Windows 7  MSI version 5  the MSI files are now cached full size to avoid breaking the file signature that prevents the UAC prompt on setup launch  a known Vista problem   This may cause a tremendous increase in disk space consumption  several gigabytes for some systems   To prevent caching a huge MSI file  you should run an admin-install of the package before installing  This is how a company with proper deployment in a managed network would do things  and it will strip out the cab files and make a network install point with a small MSI file and files besides it     Admin-installs have many uses  It is recommended to read more about admin-installs since it is a useful concept  and I have written a post on stackoverflow  What is the purpose of administrative installation initiated using msiexec  a    In essence the admin install is important for    Extracting and inspecting the installer files   To get an idea of what is actually being installed and where To ensure that the files look trustworthy and secure  no viruses - malware and viruses can still hide inside the MSI file though   Deployment via systems management software  for example SCCM  Corporate application repackaging Repair  modify and self-repair operations Patching  amp  upgrades MSI advertisement  among other details this involves the  run from source  feature where you can run directly from a network share and you only install shortcuts and registry data  A number of other smaller details   Please read the stackoverflow post linked above for more details  It is quite an important concept for system administrators  application packagers  setup developers  release managers  and even the average user to see what they are installing etc       Admin-install  practical how-to  You can perform an admin-install in a few different ways depending on how the installer is delivered  Essentially it is either delivered as an MSI file or wrapped in an setup exe file    Run these commands from an elevated command prompt  and follow the instructions in the GUI for the interactive command lines    MSI files   msiexec  a File msi   that s to run with GUI  you can do it silently too   msiexec  a File msi TARGETDIR C  MyInstallPoint  qn  setup exe files   setup exe  a    A setup exe file can also be a legacy style setup  non-MSI  or the dreaded Installscript MSI file type - a well known buggy Installshield project type with hybrid non-standards-compliant MSI format  It is essentially an MSI with a custom  more advanced GUI  but it is also full of bugs   For legacy setup exe files the  a will do nothing  but you can try the  extract all  path  switch as explained in this pdf  It is a good reference for silent installation and other things as well  Another resource is this list of Installshield setup exe command line parameters    MSI patch files    MSP  can be applied to an admin image to properly extract its files  7Zip will also be able to extract the files  but they will not be properly formatted   Finally - the last resort - if no other way works  you can get hold of extracted setup files by cleaning out the temp folder on your system  launch the setup exe interactively and then wait for the first dialog to show up  In most cases the installer will have extracted a bunch of files to a temp folder  Sometimes the files are plain  other times in CAB format  but Winzip  7Zip or even Universal Extractor  haven t tested this product  - may be able to open these

User · Answer

Launch the installer  but don t press the Install   button  Then  cd   AppData     LocalLow Sun Java    and find your MSI file in one of sub-directories  e g   jre1 7 0 25    Note that Data1 cab from that sub-directory will be required as well

User · Answer

There is no need to use any tool    We can follow the simple way     I do not know which tool built your self-extracting Setup program and so  I will have to provide a general response    Most programs of this nature extract the package file   msi  into the TEMP directory  This behavior is the default behavior of InstallShield Developer   Without additional information  I would recommend that you simply launch the setup and once the first MSI dialog is displayed  you can examine your TEMP directory for a newly created sub-directory or MSI file  Before cancelling stopping an installer just copy that MSI file from TEMP folder  After that you can cancel the installation

User · Answer

The only way to do that is running the exe and collect the MSI  The thing you must take care of is that if you are tranforming the MSI using MST they might get lost    I use this batch commandline   SET TMP c  msipath  MD   TMP    SET TEMP  TMP   start  d  c  install  install exe  L1033  PING 1 1 1 1 -n 1 -w 10000  gt NUL  for  R   TMP     f in    msi  do copy    f    TMP    taskkill  F  IM msiexec exe  T

User · Answer

I m guessing this question was mainly about InstallShield given the tags  but in case anyone comes here with the same problem for WiX-based packages  and possibly others   just call the installer with  extract  like so   C   gt  installer exe  extract   That ll place the MSI in the folder alongside the installer

User · Answer

For InstallShield MSI based projects I have found the following to work   setup exe  s  x  b C  FolderInWhichMSIWillBeExtracted   v  qn    This command will lead to an extracted MSI in a directory you can freely specify and a silently failed uninstall of the product   The command line basically tells the setup exe to attempt to uninstall the product   x  and do so silently   s   While doing that it should extract the MSI to a specific location   b    The  v command passes arguments to Windows Installer  in this case the  qn argument  The  qn argument disables any GUI output of the installer

User · Answer

7-Zip should do the trick   With it  you can extract all the files inside the EXE  thus  also an MSI file    Although you can do it with 7-Zip  the better way is the administrative installation as pointed out by Stein   smul

[installation] Extract MSI from EXE

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