Hi - first of all I have to say great work to Morlac for his i6comp util, which
works great in most cases. But a few days ago I found myself in the situation
that I needed to first of all, list the contents of a Installshield .CAB archive,
thus being able to remove components that was not necessary. And at
earlier times, i6comp have been working great for that matter.

Though this time it complained about missing header file (data2.hdr), while
the package only ships with one header file (data1.hdr for data1.cab). And
thus leaving me without a possible sollution. I've tried other ways of
approaching it, using other tools, but they are either outdated, or not
good for this matter.

Which leaves me with these questions:

1) Is it possible to create a header file for this type of installation?
- even though originally it does not have a header file.
2) Are there any other sollutions that I might have missed?

Installshield setup version: 6.31.100.1190

Any help would be most appreaciated.

Howdy,

"1) Is it possible to create a header file for this type of installation?
- even though originally it does not have a header file.

You said it has a header file, data1.hdr.
You can create header files although, how do you know what is needed to create a data2.hdr file ? what info is it looking for ?

Woodmann

I guess I should have made it a bit more clear, the package contains of
two .cab files (data1.cab and data2.cab), while data1.cab got an header
file with it - namely data1.hdr, data2.cab does not, and i6comp complains
about missing header file when trying to extract/list the contents of that
particular CAB file - and of course, its data2.cab I need the data from.

Hopefully that made it a bit more clear on what the exact problem is - and
since most of the problems I found around the NET, and on the board here
covered other aspects of Installshield - and its CAB files, I was left without
a clue on how to approach it - other than the obvious of re-creating the
header file.

And regarding what information it looks for - I guess i6comp is written so
that it bases itself on the information that is stored in the header files, thus
without the header files, it's not possible to use that particular tool to
even view the CAB files. In other words, what I am trying to achieve is to
get the index (in term of i6comp) of the files in that particular CAB file, so
that I can determine what files is needed, and whom could be deleted.

Thanks in advance!

There are utilities to extract .cab files if this is what you desire.

CabExtract ???

Woodmann

The different tools I've tested - where a few of them was named CABExtract,
then those of which I've tested have either been tools spesifically for
Microsoft Cabinet Archives - or similar, but not accepting Installshield CAB
files - and further tested CAB tools that have been able to handle different
types of cabinet compression methods like MSZIP, Quantum, LZX and others.

Further, I also tested ZipScan v2.2 - which gives you the ability to extract
CAB files (both Microsoft and Installshield), but this one, only managed to
open the data1.cab file, while the big one data2.cab file, which actually
contains the programdata, was not possible to open.

I know there are tools for *nix as well, though from where I am at the
moment I can only use Windows based tools, leaving me a bit capped on
the possibillities. I wouldn't be surprised if there are *nix based tools that
would work great, though not an option for me right now. If it turns out
that it would be the only sollution, then I would just need to let the project
rest untill vacation is at an end, and undertake it again at a later stage.

The tool / sollution, needs to give me option to;
a) List/Delete - or -
b) Extract/Compress

Thanks for the rather quick answer, most appreaciated

Hi,

Lets try ISCAB.exe ?? Or something like that.
If you search the installshield site, I am sure you will find something to help you.

The only other thing is to rebuild the entire project using your own header files.
I do not think this is necessary.

Woodmann

Woodmann, I am in a similar position to this guy, and I tried ISCAB, but then setup complained about an invalid Support file. What I did was use ISCAB to list the files, then selected to replace the dll that I had amended, then when I ran ISCAB to update all was ok. However when I run setup I get the error I mentioned about an invalid Support file.
How would I go about rebuilding a project from header files? A pointer to a tut or any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

I am curious, if the package initially discussed comes with two cab files, can they be installed as is in the usual manner? Could the information of header2 be contained in the header1 file? This is out of my area of knowledge, but it would seem that if the package is capable of being installed, then the header2 information must be present somewhere.

Rackmount,
The information for data2.cab is indeed in the data1.hdr. I don't think iscab.exe will work in this situation. Try using the cab file viewer that comes with Installshield X Studio. It's GUI, not console based. With it, you can view the contents and extract the files from either cab.

I don't know if I understand the question, but here are some things to consider:

1)assuming the app will run normally, is it dumping it's cab files along the way in a remote directory? Use filemon to find out.

2)if it's too smart for that, can you start the program using symbol loader and trace it manually in softice till it opens it's cabs? You can use break points to skip over large chunks of code, or bpx in where the last Installshield window appears. You may run into anti-ice tricks, or the app may be packed, but what's that to this outfit?

3)there used to be an Installshield script debugger. Is a later version available? Or am I so out of touch that Installshield is suddenly impossible to trick?

4)are you using an updated version of i5comp or i6comp? I got caught with that one a while back. The earlier versions of the same wont open the cab files.