Software Deployment

doing an administrative installation will extract the files
msiexec /a "path to .msi"

even i thot so .. but for me its not working :(

d command i m using is c:\msiexec /a "c:\temp\msnmsg.msi"

where shud i search for the exe ?? which folder?

don't run c:\msiexec
just execute: msiexec /a "c:\temp\msnmsg.msi"

theBug,

If you're doing it correctly you will be prompted where to extract the files to, the default is c:\

There is a problem with the command you are running:

c:\msiexec /a "c:\temp\msnmsg.msi"

msiexec.exe is in the Windows\System32 directory.

Just open the run window and type

msiexec /a "c:\temp\msnmsg.msi"

This will prompt you to enter a network installation point, where you can specify a folder on a local drive to extract to.
The files are then extracted into the folder structure it would install to.

Thanks,

Dunnpy

Hi folks,
this can't work with MSN Messenger MSI, because this MSI lacks the presence of the 'AdminExecuteSequence' + 'AdminUISequence' tables.
There are two different aproaches to do it, nevertheless. It depends, what you want to achieve with the file extraction.

First, you could populate the missing 'AdminExecuteSequence' table to the MSI.
Use ORCA and load Sequence.msi from the Installer SDK to export this table. Then load msnmsg.msi to import it.
After that, you have to do the admin install in silent mode, because there is no dialog for the UI phase in the MSI.
'msiexec /a msnmsg.msi TARGETDIR=<your admin destination dir> /qn'

The second aproach would be to extract the cab file with:
msidb /d MsnMsgs.msi /x MsgrCore.cab (Msidb.exe from the SDK).
After that, explorer is your friend :-)

Hope this gives you some ideas.
Regards, Nick