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PureMassacre

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Hi, I want to open a Microsoft Installer (.msi) file, in the same way in which you open a .rar file. I do not want to install it, I just want to extract the files to a folder. Hope you can help.
 
Thanks.

Has anyone got any experience with this? I have download orca, and opened the .msi. I can now see the files that are in the .msi, but I have no idea how you would be able to extract them. Help!
 
from http://msgoodies.blogspot.com/2005/03/extracting-files-from-msi.html

I wanted to be able to extract files directly out of an MSI file. Sometimes, I simply do not want to power up the correct OS version or install a product just to get to the files within. I tried doing it with ORCA (from the platform SDK) – but couldn’t figure it out. I also tried some of the other platform SDK msi*.exe tools – again without luck. Maybe someone can tell me how? Next I tried to investigate whether the MSI could be accessed by SQL. Again, I failed to find the necessary information. Finally, I got it. I looked at the Project Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset. I downloaded the wix i386 binaries and extracted the ZIP file. Then I ran –

Dark.exe file.MSI file.XML /x .

The result of this conversion (file.XML) and extraction (/x) is a file.XML (which I have no use for) and the binary files contained within the MSI file.
 
wow... I have seen a lot of junk, but you all are pretty far off. If you simply want to extract the files, then do the following...

msiexec.exe /a "msi.msi"
that will run an administrative install which does nothing but extract the files. easy huh?
Orca is another way, but the problem is that you have to write out the Binary files one at a time to see them.
There are other tools out there, but most are not free. I write MSI's for the company I work with, so I understand them quite well. :)
Hope this helps you. if you are still having trouble, let me know and I'll point you down the road...

Good luck
 
Hmm, that seems alot simpler. How do I do:

msiexec.exe /a "msi.msi" ?

My .msi is located: D:\beta.msi

I went to Run: and typed msiexec.msi /a "D:\beta.msi"

It said "Preparing to Install...", then disappeared. Whats going on? :confused:
 
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