Software Deployment

Hi Dean,
your suggestion is not possible, because a nested MSI of CA type 7 will be stored as a substorage.
The only way to extract substorages without scripting/programming is the use of the "misdb" tool from the installer SDK.
msidb -d "The package.msi" -w "Name of the nested MSI"
Regards, Nick

Perform an administrative install for the 'master' MSI, then another for any nested MSIs.

not sure if that would work Ian. Its been a while since I opened and MSI but from memory nested MSI's were in the binary table and as such wouldnt be exported from admin install.

If that was the case you can use the automation object to get from file streams (ie binary table) if using wise you can get it from the resources page.

Not sure if IS can do this easily.

Ah, very true, John. I guess it depends on how the 'master' MSI was built. Still, as you say, once you have the first admin install point, everything else will be available by some means or other. No offence to the OP, but given the question, I think the suggestion of using the Automation object is somewhat ambitious.

You can use this method to extract VB scripts, not sure about other files though.

Open MSI in either in WPS or Orca.
Go to the binary table and find your file. double click [binary data] in the data column and choose to Write binary to filename.

Woot, this post just saved me a whole lot of head bashing. Now I have a practical use for MSIDB!

Just don't ask me why I am hacking a vendor MSI to this extent. [8D]

Had a similar issue where I wanted to extract the embedded transforms from the _Storages table.
Got the tip from Neil to rename the MSI to MSP, drop it on InstEd and select to extract the content.

Using msidb.exe will be easier however; in next version of InstEd you will be able to extract the binaries from this table as with any other table storing binaries.

Kevin; sounds more like an invitation to ask [:D]

I think the latest version of Wise also lets you right click on the row of the Binary table and extract the files...could be wrong though...I'm 50/50 on this one :).

Hi folks,
@ Kevin: Glad to see, i could help.
@ Kim: This one could also be done with Heat Stewarts MsiX. http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2006/04/07/571138.aspx
But good to know, that there's an alternative.
@ Jay: The binary table has never been a problem (several tools like ORCA, can do that),
but the extra streams, that are hold directly by the MSI.

Regards, Nick

Yeah it's a silly situation I am in. We are trying to deploy NitroPDF as a core application to Vista but the library isn't working 100% so we made a decision for the pilot to rip the PDF Library functionality out of the MSI for our pilot. This was fairly straight forward except one of the embedded MSIs has the registry COM registrations for a DLL that the parent MSI installs causing an unnecessary self heal each time Word opens.

I don't know if I am being too critical but I wouldn't have designed their installers to implement a component across two MSIs.

Have any of you tried Universal Extractor ? http://legroom.net/software/uniextract

I'm not sure how well it works. I haven't used it..

Hi Leo,
yes UE is a very handy tool, which i use frequently. It can handle an incredible amount of different formats.
But it can't extract streams from an MSI, except a CAB-file.
Regards, Nick