the back room tech

I’ve written in the past about how to extract MSI files at the Windows command prompt, and how to extract the .msi files and edit them using UniExtract and Orca.

I think I now have a new favorite tool for extracting .MSI files, and it’s called Less MSIerables (lessmsi) by Scott Willeke.  It can be run from the GUI, from the command line, or from the Windows right click context menu.

Using the GUI, you can extract the entire contents of a .msi file, or just certain files.  The command line syntax is:

lessmsi -x <inputfile> <output directory>

Example:

lessmsi -x “C:\Downloads\ActiveReports for .NET Setup.msi”

Download the utility and check it out! (Note: Alternate download site here)