Trying to install a piece of software I had to extract a certain file from a Microsoft installer file (”.msi”). First I thought this would be as easy as right-clicking on the file and selecting “Winzip->Extract” … *duh*

The easiest method to extract files was found here and suggests using the command line tool msiexec.

Executing “msiexec /a target.msi” in a command prompt will open up the installer of the MSI file. Instead of installing the files locally it will prompt you for a network share. It seems the target must be a network share for the extraction to work.

After the pseudo-installation process you will find the relevant files from MSI in you specified network folder.

People who are more curious might consider playing around with the tool “orca.exe” from the Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 SP1: you can not use this tool to actually extract the files but you can look up what files and parts are containted within the MSI of your choice.

First install the SDK from the Microsoft Website (will install on most Windows flavors - chosing the core files and the Installer SDK should do fine).

After the installation you will find a file “orca.msi” in the \Microsoft Platform SDK\bin folder. Install this one too.

You can now open up orca.exe, load an MSI file and take a look at the contents.

The entries in the table “Feature” can now be used to only install specific parts from the MSI:
msiexec /i adminpak.msi ADDLOCAL=FeADTools /qb
(as found on the homepage of Daniel Petri).