Application installers are supposed to save you time, automatically configuring your PC to properly run their host application.

• How To Extract .exe Files
• How To Extract Files From A .exe Installer

Unfortunately, many setup programs only exist as a way to get adware onto your system, sometimes without you even noticing.

One way to avoid this is to extract the contents of your setup file before you run it. At a minimum you’ll get a better idea what your particular setup.exe contains, and you may find you can extract and run small applications without installing them at all.

Archiving software can often do this, at a basic level. Install 7-Zip, for instance, and you’ll be able to right-click Windows Installer files (*.MSI) and extract their contents.

This only gets you the source files, so there’s no information on what the installer was going to do, but just seeing the contents of your particular setup.msi might be useful.

Inno Setup Unpacker takes the process further by extracting both the application files and the setup script of Inno Setup installers. (It won’t work with other types of setup files, but Inno is so popular that you’ve a good chance of success.)

Based on the information you have provided, it's possible that the issue is caused by a software conflict, or due to corrupted system files. To help resolve your concern, we suggest that you run the System File Checker and DISM tool. System File Checker (SFC) is a utility in Windows that scans for corrupted Windows system files. Open 7-Zip and browse to the folder containing the exe. Right click on the exe file and click 'Open Inside'.

As you’d expect with this kind of tool, Inno Setup Unpacker doesn’t require installation itself. It’s an open-source command-line tool which arrives as a very tiny download (134KB), and once unpacked it’s ready to go.

Basic usage is simple enough. There are command line switches to list file contents, test for integrity, define paths and so on, but you can get by with nothing more than this:

innounp -x setup.exe

The command tells Inno Setup Unpacker to extract the components of setup.exe into the current folder.

Assuming this is an Inno Setup installer, the unpacker will probably produce an iss file, like install_script.iss -- the script which holds the instructions for the installer -- and an [app] folder with the application’s various components.

Check the [app] folder to see what it contains. If it’s something very simple, maybe a readme file, an internet shortcut, one executable, perhaps a DLL, then you can probably run it immediately without using the official installer.

There are no guarantees, though, so keep in mind that you’re on your own here. If the application crashes your PC or causes some data loss because it’s not been installed correctly -- unlikely, but not impossible -- then it’s your responsibility. We would only try this on relatively simple applications, and on systems which are fully backed up.

Decoding installation scripts

Unpacking installers isn’t just about looking at the source files, of course. The setup script can tell you a lot about the application, and you don’t have to be a developer to find it useful.

We tried Inno Setup Unpacker with NoVirusThanks Stream Detector, for example, a handy tool for detecting and working on alternate data streams. It worked, but our [app] folder had two files, StreamDetector,1.exe and StreamDetector,2.exe. What was going on?

We opened install_script.iss in Notepad, and browsed to the Files section, which began like this.

[Files]
Source: '{app}StreamDetector,1.exe”; DestDir: “{app}'; DestName: 'StreamDetector.exe'; Check: 'Is64BitInstallMode'; MinVersion: 0.0,5.0; Flags: ignoreversion

Source: '{app}StreamDetector,2.exe”; DestDir: “{app}'; DestName: 'StreamDetector.exe'; Check: 'not Is64BitInstallMode'; MinVersion: 0.0,5.0; Flags: ignoreversion

The 'Source' parameter names the files we’re looking for.

'DestDir' tells the installer where the file should be placed. In this case it’s the application folder, but if it’s some other location you’ll be able to read it here.

The third 'Check' parameter is the one which answers our question, though. The installer places StreamDetector,1.exe on your system if 'Is64BitInstallMode' is true, so that will be the 64-bit version. StreamDetector,2.exe is used if 'not Is64BitInstallMode', so that’ll be the 32-bit build.

This is a good example of why companies might use an installer, when it doesn’t initially seem necessary. NoVirusThanks is an honest company, and not trying to install adware or do anything sneaky: they’re just making sure you get the appropriate 32 or 64-bit version, without having to choose it yourself.

But it’s also a good example of how unpacking the installer can pay off, as you can see there’s no harmful payload, and that it’s most likely safe to take the 32 or 64-bit build and run it anywhere, without installing first.

There are other useful elements to the script, and scanning the various sections can tell you more about what’s happening. Here are a few examples.

[Setup]
DefaultDirName={pf}NoVirusThanksStream Detector

[Tasks]
Name: 'desktopicon'; Description: '{cm:CreateDesktopIcon}'; GroupDescription: '{cm:AdditionalIcons}'; MinVersion: 0.0,5.0;
Name: 'quicklaunchicon'; Description: '{cm:CreateQuickLaunchIcon}'; GroupDescription: '{cm:AdditionalIcons}'; MinVersion: 0.0,5.0;

[Run]
Filename: '{app}StreamDetector.exe'; Description: 'Open NoVirusThanks Stream Detector'; MinVersion: 0.0,5.0; Flags: shellexec postinstall skipifsilent nowait

As before, it’s not difficult to figure out the basic details.

DefaultDirName is the default storage location of the program ({pf} is your 32 or 64-bit Program Files folder).

The 'Tasks' entries tell us this is one of those installers that will ask if you’d like a desktop or quick launch shortcut to the program.

And the 'Run' entry tells us there will be a 'run the program now' option when setup is complete. That’s just launching the main application, no other files or command line parameters involved, so it all looks safe and secure.

While this is easy enough, you probably won’t want to analyze installers on a regular basis. If you trust the developer, there’s little need; if the package is something vast and complex then you won’t be able to get much from it anyway.

Inno Setup Unpacker can give you a lot of information about more obscure installers, though, and on balance it’s well worth a place in your security toolkit.

Problem:

You need to extract an .msi file from an .exe installer.

How To Extract .exe Files

Solution:

There are at least three ways of solving this problem, but none of them is universal. You might need to go through all of them to find the one that works for the EXE installer that you have.

CodeTwo strongly advises against extracting (and using) MSI files from the EXE installers of the CodeTwo software. Unless the product website allows such an operation (or unless you are instructed/allowed to do so by CodeTwo Support), use the .exe setup files.

The first method is based on the fact that most installers extract their .msi files to the temporary files folder during the installation process. To extract an MSI file from an EXE installer, you need to:

1. Launch your .exe file.
2. When you see the first prompt (e.g. a question about whether you want to continue installation, accept a license agreement, etc.), do not click anything in this window and do not close it.
3. Open Windows Explorer, type %temp% in the address bar and press Enter.
4. Sort the files in the folder by the modification date. The newest file on the list should be the .msi file you are looking for.
5. Copy the MSI file to a safe location before you close the installer prompt window (see step 2). Be aware that if you close the installer window, the MSI file will be immediately deleted from the temporary files folder.

How To Extract Files From A .exe Installer

The second method uses a free third-party tool called 7-Zip to browse the content of the .exe installer file. Follow the steps below.

1. Download 7-Zip from this page and install it.
2. Right-click on the .exe file (from which you want to extract an .msi file) and from the shortcut menu choose 7-Zip > Open Archive.
3. Do not extract any files yet. Instead, browse and look for the folder MSI within the contents. It might take some time to find this folder because it is not always located directly in the root directory (its location may vary depending on the installer).
4. When you locate the MSI folder, you will notice that it most likely does not contain any .msi files, but a file or files with no extensions and rather cryptic names such as 132. Despite these misleading names, these are actually the MSI files you are looking for.
5. Drag and drop these files to any desired folder or select them and extract them with 7-Zip. Close 7-Zip after that.
6. Change the names of the extracted files so that they include the .msi extension.
7. If there are two files, the larger one is the 64-bit installer, and the smaller one is the 32-bit version. Use the one you need.

The third method works with InstallShield based projects. To get the MSI file from your EXE installer, you need to:

1. Log on to a computer where the software (the installer of which you would like to access) is not installed. This is because this method forces the uninstalling process to trigger extraction of the .msi file. If you already have this software installed, this method will remove it, which might not be desired.
2. Run Windows Command Prompt (cmd) (in Windows 10: open the Start menu, type cmd and press Enter) and go to the folder where your EXE file is located.
3. Execute the command below:

   replace <file.exe> with the name of your .exe file and <target-folder> with the path to the folder where you want the .msi file to be extracted (for example C:Folder).

As described in this thread, the switches for the command above do the following:

• /s /x - silently (/s) uninstalls (/x) the product from the system;
• /b - defines the target path for the .msi file;
• /v - passes desired arguments to the installer. In this case, the argument is /qn - it disables GUI and any prompts.