Comments on: Howto: extract files from a .msi file using the Windows command line

By: renzo hernandez

renzo hernandez — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:08:33 +0000

hey there ..well i dont understand nothing of what you have said..but heres my problem ive been trying to install this program called steam ..some of you may know that program …well every time i hit the install button i keep on getting this error saying ERROR 1324 THE FOLDER PATH ‘PROGRAM FILES (X86)’ CONTAINS A INVALID CHARACTER AND IVE BEEN TRYING BUT I JUST CANT FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM

By: 0x

0x — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:08:04 +0000

Good Guide – A few points I’d like to add.

The instructions here, as well as the contributions given by various users, will allow you a great deal of flexibility with .MSI files

For example:
One may extract/Install an MSI application which USUALLY could not be installed with a NON-Administrator account (eg – a “limited” account”.

I point to the users korser and Andris above. Andris reminds users to ensure the extract path is in the correct format- but more importantly, what I’d like to share is that point out the parameters suggested by korser.
They will allow you to extract the contents of MSI files – circumventing the user privilege restrictions, HOWEVER, some MSI packages may not want to extract to a SUB-folder!
They may require that you extract them to a root folder – such as on your local hard drive, OR an external thumb drive, etc.

Just thought I would mention that ^_^

By: meomando

meomando — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:17:47 +0000

It is great tool “Scott Willeke”

thaaaaaaaaaaanks

By: Branislav Abadjimarinov

Branislav Abadjimarinov — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:03:04 +0000

Thanks, that was a real lifesaver. It worked perfect with .msi file containing some files.

By: How to get jQuery 1.4.1-vsdoc

How to get jQuery 1.4.1-vsdoc — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:38:00 +0000

[...] Type this MS DOS command (referenced from this blog post), when it’s complete, close the command window: msiexec /a vs2008toolsmvc2.msi /qb [...]

By: James Bastion

James Bastion — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:13:45 +0000

Could be a nice utility but I have a particular use case that can’t be that hard to cater for. Here goes: I would like access to a the contents of an msi file that was hidden in an installshield.exe which wouldn’t install without IIS (unshield did the trick). I don’t run any Microsoft products and have taken a stance against allowing mono (dotnet) on any boxes I have control over. I hoped that the commandline option of lessmsi would give me just that but it reports dependency on dotnet.

The msi file has documentation, java libraries and the like with generic application but for some reason the requirement of Microsoft products appears at every turn, this seems strange to me.

By: Scott Willeke

Scott Willeke — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:21:12 +0000

FYI: I published an update to the LessMSIerables utility at http://code.google.com/p/lessmsi/

By: Extracting MSI Files Locally to Avoid Install

Extracting MSI Files Locally to Avoid Install — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:12:25 +0000

[...] quick Google search for “extracting msi files” revealed a really nice blog post Howto: extract files from a .msi file using the Windows command line . Go there and learn how to extract MSI files and then add them manually to a tools repository and [...]

By: winternight119

winternight119 — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:12:41 +0000

Of course it’s not going to work in Wine, it’s not Windows, and not all of the resources for completing command line operations are there. Try VirtualBox.

~Night

By: Neil Hunt

Neil Hunt — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:48:34 +0000

The next version of InstEd Plus (http://www.instedit.com/instedplus) will allow you to easily extract the files from an msi/msm into a source tree. Plus you get all the normal features of InstEd and InstEd Plus.