Extracting the Contents of an MSI File

Q: How can I extract the content of an MSI file?

A: There are numerous utilities that will extract the content of an MSI file (e.g., msidb, which you can download at msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa370083.aspx). However, you can also extract the content by performing an administrative installation using the Msiexec command with the /a switch and specifying a target folder for the extraction, as the following example shows:

D:\temp>msiexec /a mm26_enu.msi /qb TARGETDIR=d:\temp\mmextract

For more information about Windows Installer command-line options, see the Microsoft article “Command-line Options” at www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/msiexec.mspx?mfr=true.