12 replies to this topic

[aglenwright]

This is a bit off-topic, but there isn't really a category for this one...

Does anyone know how to read the .MSI file from inside a single-file install (setup.exe) created with Installshield?  I can open the setup.exe with WinRAR, which reports it as "SFX CAB archive", but the only files I can see seem to be the msi runtimes, not the actual .MSI file or the files that are to be installed...

[aglenwright]

PS:  It's so I can write a program to create a "build" report...

[Stefan Krueger]

You could launch the setup and grab the extracted contents from the tmep directory. Or yu perform an administrative install which will unpack all the files to a location you specify.

[aglenwright]

I was having a bit of trouble finding the command-line switches to do that  - do you have them handy?

[Stefan Krueger]

msiexec.exe /a your.msi
(you may need to specify the full path to your.msi)

[aglenwright]

No, the file I'm trying to deal with is a setup.exe (thats it, no MSI file), created by ISWI 2.0x - it contains an MSI file somewhere in it's guts, but I can't figure out how to get at it.

[Stefan Krueger]

Oh, sorry.
setup.exe /a
should do it

[jsp]

I am not sure this will work, stefan.
I would have tried Setup.exe /V"/a"
Hope this helps.
JSP

[aglenwright]

When I try setup /V"/a" I get a "Incorrect command line parameters" error message.

When I try setup /a, it does (sort of) work, but asks the user for a destination path.  I was after an automatic way of doing it - preferably "silent" (no UI).

[jsp]

I understood you were using a setup.exe then contains the entire setup package copressed in it.
If this is the case, it works. And if you want to perform it in blind, try: setup.exe /s /V"/a /q"
If you are not in compressed mode, just launch msiexec with the command line parameters that are described in the documentation.
JSP

[aglenwright]

I pasted the command you put - setup.exe /s /V"/a /q" into the command prompt, and still got "Incorrect command line parameters".  The caption on the dialog box was "Windows Installer".

The setup.exe is one that contains the entire setup package compressed in it...  It was created with ISWI 2.0

[aglenwright]

The platform SDK documentation says that the /a parameter requires "Package" as an argument.  Would that be the package code GUID?

[Stefan Krueger]

I assume we are talking about a setup that is packaged into a single self extracting exe with InstallShield. Therefore the setup.exe command line parameters can be looked up in the InstallShield docs. From the top of my head I would try setup.exe /s /a

If you use the /a option with msiexec (instead of InstallShield's setup.exe) you should specify the path to the msi file.