I can say that I really hate Microsoft MSI installers because sometimes the installation would screw up so bad that I cannot even uninstall or reinstall the program. Most of the time the problem can be fixed by using Windows Installer CleanUp Utility but there are times when this tool doesn’t work at all and had to reinstall the whole Windows operating system because my client urgently needs to use the software.
There are some programmers that likes to use MSI installers to pack their programs when the program doesn’t really installation. I don’t want to have tons of program in my Program Files folder and also unnecessary registry entries. Let’s take Microsoft BootVis, a performance trace visualization utility that you can use with Windows XP systems as an example. The setup file is bootvis.msi and requires installation. After installation, there are only 4 files in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Bootvis. From the looks of it, I don’t really need to install the program and can actually run BootVis.exe from anywhere.
So here are some useful methods that you can use to view and extract contents of a MSI file.
When I posted about Universal Extractor, it did mentioned that it can extract files from Windows Installer Package MSI. I tried loading a MSI file in Universal Extractor and it prompt me that it supports 3 methods (MSI Administrative Installer, msi2xml extraction and MSI TC Packer extraction) of extracting MSI installer packages. The first method uses the command line method which you’ll find at many other websites on how to extract MSI files. The command is: msiexec /a filepathtoMSIfile /qb TARGETDIR=filepathtotargetfolder
The second one uses an open source Windows Installer Database To XML Bi-Directional Converter created by Daniel Gehriger. The third method uses a Total Commander plugin created by Alex Gretha that extracts Windows Installer package (MSI).
Unfortunately none of methods are 100% reliable. If the default method does not seem to work, you have to rerun Universal Extractor and select an alternative method. All 3 method in Universal Extractor only extracts all the files in MSI package. It doesn’t allow you to view what is inside the MSI package and pick only the file that you want to extract.
I found another free tool called Less MSIérables aka lessmsi, a small tool to extract the contents of an .msi file.
The good thing about Less MSIerables is you are able to view the contents of a MSI file. See any files that you want to extract, just put a checkmark next to the file and click Extract. Other than that, there is a table view where you get to see more geeky information such as File, Components, File Name, File Size, Version, Language, Attributes and Sequence. There’s also a Summary tab for you to view a summarized information about the MSI file. The last time Less MSIérables aka lessmsi updated was on November, 10, 2005. Although it is very old but it works perfectly!
I wish I’d found this sooner!
The headaches…
At the spur of the moment, I needed to pull a single file from an MSI. Searched for MSI Extraction and got your site on the top of the list. Badda Bing Badda Boom and I had my file for my client. You rock dude! Thanks!
i believe you can also use 7zip to extract msi packed file..
Possibly the most useful software I had this new year, thank you raymond :)
Great tool , thanks =)
Thanks Raymond – Happy New Year.
When I had MSI issues I’ve always used Basic MSI Unpacker:
jsware.net/jsware/msicode.php5
nevertheless your 2 additions are great to my arsenal.
Thx
By the way, Happy New Year all.
Thank you so much for all of your hard work in bringing everyone so many great ideas. I am a regular visitor and feel I need to just say THANK YOU!
Thanks from Greece Ray!!!
You can also do it from the command prompt. In Windows XP you have to use the following command :
msiexec /a PathToMSIFile /qb TARGETDIR=DirectoryToExtractTo
Thank you for your tips Raymond, this really helpful for me. :)
I hate those MSI installers too.
Microsoft even put their commandline tools as installers, why did they don’t put just the exe file?!
I have an XP virtual machine running in my Vista main machine to run all those installers so I can extract easily the contents.
Nice post raymond is there any utility to join or extract cab files
thanks for the misserables..didnt know this one!
Great tip mate, thanks, Happy New Year!
thanks ray i really needed this
Wow, thanks for the recommendation… like your posts, your site seems to be my daily habit (though i seldom post comments)
nice information
nice tool ray, i once ecounter a .msi file and dont know what todo but now i have the tools to extract it thanks ray! :)
Believe it or not, I need to use some of those tons of the utilities you post every day. Storing them is not a problem, but even if I try to order them it\’s kinda difficult to remember where they are and even what they do. They are just too much, maybe … or is it just because I read your posts every day and I download everything? Anyway, it\’s a while I\’m reading your posts, I must congratulate you. I also grabbed some free licenses, wow. I\’ll be continuing doing this. Also, please continue you too writing. Keep up the good work, young man ! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!
Thanks again sir raymond for this wonderful and useful app. i always used universal extractor for my portable apps..this one really helps..
thanks again
Hello Ray,
I used ORCA, but this doesn’t work as expected. Also, most of the time Universal extractor cannot extract anything from the MSi – it doesn’t do a very good job.
But I’m glad you posted something concrete. I am going to try this one.
Have any idea if the author is going to update the Less MSIérables? By the name, I guess it’s a french author…
Thanks for this tip man. I hoped Microsoft would have given a tool of its own, but…
Thanks again.
Thanks. A program such as this may be handy in making a portable app for a USB flash drive.
Lol. I just downloaded BootVis. I use this MSI extractor to remove all the Bonjour and other services bundled with the iTunes setup. Thanks.