[matidio]

nitro322, on Apr 28 2006, 01:02 AM, said:

Did you use the installer or the archive? If you used the installer, did you choose to "Add Universal Extractor to your system path"?

I used the archive as I wrote and you're right when you say I have an invalid path of Universal Extractor in the path variable. I didn't remember its existence otherwise I would have deleted it. Ok, problem resolved. Although I think this is a bug. As I assume UE tries to find the extracting binaries in its path, can't find them but then uses PEID.exe in the current path (the one from which I launched it), is this right? Ok, it's a rare case ... anyway.

As I said in my comments some week ago. A very nice application, thanks for it.

Saluti

[nitro322]

matidio, on May 3 2006, 01:45 AM, said:

Although I think this is a bug. As I assume UE tries to find the extracting binaries in its path, can't find them but then uses PEID.exe in the current path (the one from which I launched it), is this right?

When UniExtract.exe is executed, it determins it's current path, then sets the working path equal to:

%path% = path\to\uniextract;%path%

So, while UniExtract is running, it looks for executables in the current running directory first for all of its support binaries, then looks in the rest of the path directories. This was done so that even if the user chooses not to add UniExtract to the system path, it'll still function properly (which is mainly suitable for people using the .rar file rather than the installer).

Basically, the only way I could see this failing due to a path issue is if the following conditions are met:

A) UniExtract.exe is moved outside of the default bin\ directory
--AND--
B) The .rar version is being used or the system path option was unchecked in the installer

As you said, it's likely a rare condition. I'm not sure if I agree with you that it's a bug, though. In order for the above conditions to be met, the user would have to manually move UniExtract.exe to a different directory that was intended. I guess I could make it only look for binaries in the same directory as UniExtract.exe, but I think I'm using a couple native windows programs for certain formats, which would then break.

Of course, it's also still possible it's something else altogether, though I still have no idea what it would be. :-) Either way, glad you finally got your problem resolved.

This post has been edited by nitro322: 03 May 2006 - 02:14 AM

[Ric30]

Thank's for a very nice program.
But i have a little problem, cant extract Wise Installer package.
It's Acoustica-CD-Label-Maker-Installer.exe version 2.50 trial.
I come to 3 option's of extract method, i choose a option, but when i click on ok or cancel nothing happens.
I have to ctrl+alt+del and kill the process.

[nitro322]

Ric30, on May 3 2006, 03:43 AM, said:

But i have a little problem, cant extract Wise Installer package.
It's Acoustica-CD-Label-Maker-Installer.exe version 2.50 trial.

I'll look into it tonight. Could you please post a link to this program?

[tap52384]

I'll try rewording my question: How do I configure windows such that it knows that Universal Extractor is the program that handles archives? If Windows is aware, then the icon used to represent archives will be just like the one for Universal Extractor. I just want to see a context menu item when I right-click archives as well as executables.

[nitro322]

tap52384, on May 3 2006, 10:43 AM, said:

How do I configure windows such that it knows that Universal Extractor is the program that handles archives?

The installer should set this up automatically for you. Make sure that "Enable Explorer context menu integration" is enabled during installation. This will associate UniExtract with all currently unassociated formats, and add context menus to all currently associated formats, but leave the association in place so that double-clicking will still open it in the current application. By currently [un]associated, I'm referring to any other applications such as WinRAR that may already be installed.

That should work for you. If it doesn't, try enabling the "Force association with with all supported archive formats" option. This will do essentially the same thing, but will associate ALL formats with UniExtract, overwriting any current associations.

If for some reason neither of those options work, let me know. I'll probably need to get some more information from you, and look into it.

[tap52384]

I must apologize again--I didn't specify that I wasn't using the installer to put Universal Extractor on my system, but it was a part of SA Utils. Is there any way with just the binary archive to force associations with Universal Extractor, like the option during the installation process?

This post has been edited by tap52384: 03 May 2006 - 12:53 PM

[nitro322]

tap52384, on May 3 2006, 12:52 PM, said:

it was a part of SA Utils

What's SA Utils?

tap52384, on May 3 2006, 12:52 PM, said:

Is there any way with just the binary archive to force associations with Universal Extractor?

Not directly. Your best bet for doing that would be to download the source code archive, look at the [Registry] section of the Inno Setup (.iss), then recreate in a standard .reg file that you can import yourself on any system.

If you go down this route, though I should warn you that the Registry section is fairly complex. I had to account for various conditions for each type of archive (whether or not it's already associated with something, whether or not you want to force association with UniExtract, etc.). The simplest route would be to add all of the "; Native associations" and all of the "; Additional Associations" that are flagged with "Tasks: associate\force". This will register the UniExtract context menu entries with Windows, and associate all supported apps, which in turn will use add the context menu entries. However, this will overwrite any existing associations (such as with WinRAR, for example). If you want to maintain existing associations, you have a lot more work to do.

Alternatively, you could just use the installer.

Edit: Shoot, I just realized that I had an error in the script that generates the source archive, and the .iss file is not included. I'll get that fixed tonight and upload a new copy.

Edit 2: Fixed the source archive. Sorry about that.

This post has been edited by nitro322: 03 May 2006 - 10:03 PM

[Kyrin]

nitro when i get money im going to give you $20 for making this program cause i truly needed this. Hey how about making a pack for it to install onto the unattended

[Kelsenellenelvian]

/VERYSILENT

[nitro322]

Kyrin, on May 3 2006, 09:40 PM, said:

nitro when i get money im going to give you $20 for making this program cause i truly needed this. Hey how about making a pack for it to install onto the unattended?

Glad you find it useful. :-)

As Kelsenellenelvian pointed out, the easiest way is with /verysilent. However, Inno Setup offers quite a few options for unattended installs. This page describes all of the options:
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/InnoSetu..._ExitCodes.html

One of the extremely nice things is you can use the /tasks parameter to specify which install options you'd like, if for some reason the defaults don't work for you. The 3 task names are associate, associate\force, and modify.

This post has been edited by nitro322: 03 May 2006 - 10:44 PM

[nitro322]

nitro322, on May 3 2006, 10:07 AM, said:

Ric30, on May 3 2006, 03:43 AM, said:

But i have a little problem, cant extract Wise Installer package.
It's Acoustica-CD-Label-Maker-Installer.exe version 2.50 trial.

I'll look into it tonight. Could you please post a link to this program?

I found a copy of the program myself, and found the problem. During development of v1.1 I had to change the "mode" used by the GUI in order to make drag-and-drop work correctly. Changing that mode meant substantially modifying the code behind the GUI. Well, I did a lot of testing to make sure that the code changes I made all worked fine, but I forgat that the Wise Installer method selection was a completely separate GUI, and it was still coded for the original mode. That' why it simply didn't respond to any events. Oops.

Anyway, it should all be working again. I bumped the version to 1.2.1 and re-released. The Wise Installer bug fix is the only change from 1.2. New download links are available in the original post.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Thanks!

[Ric30]

nitro322, on May 4 2006, 06:35 AM, said:

nitro322, on May 3 2006, 10:07 AM, said:

I'll look into it tonight. Could you please post a link to this program?

I found a copy of the program myself, and found the problem. During development of v1.1 I had to change the "mode" used by the GUI in order to make drag-and-drop work correctly. Changing that mode meant substantially modifying the code behind the GUI. Well, I did a lot of testing to make sure that the code changes I made all worked fine, but I forgat that the Wise Installer method selection was a completely separate GUI, and it was still coded for the original mode. That' why it simply didn't respond to any events. Oops.

Anyway, it should all be working again. I bumped the version to 1.2.1 and re-released. The Wise Installer bug fix is the only change from 1.2. New download links are available in the original post.

Thank's
Sorry for the link
Didn't check this thread yesterday, more than a couple of times.

[Thorlek]

Hi, I work as an MSI packager and came across your app today, its seems pretty awsome, however i have noticed a problem when i have tried to extract a few "Setup Launcher" EXE files i was testing your app on.

These Setup Launcher files are EXE files with contain MSI files, basically when i try to extract them i get the prompt saying "initial extraction failed, however it may be possible to extract files from this archine by...." and i do that and i usually get at least one MSI but in alot of cases these Setup Launcher files have more than just a single MSI within them.

For example the Macromedia Captivate 1.0x install contains 2 MSI files ISSheild10.msi and captivate.msi as well as a few other ini files, but when using your extractor i only get the captivate.msi file.

I'm not xactly sure how you are using this "cache" method to capture these MSI files, but 9/10 times when these setup launcher files run they extract their entire contents to _ %temp%\something _ maybe you could get it to parse %temp% to get the other files?

You can get the macromedia captive 1.0x install from here: http://www.adobe.com/go/trycaptivate but the basic problem is present for all the Setup Launcher EXE's i've tryed to extract, it only ever gets me a single MSI file and miss's other ini, txt, exe, msi's

Oh and there is a spelling mistake on the "main" screen when this extraction is taking place, it says "Extracting files from" IstallShield package" there is an "n" missing from InstallShield.

EDIT: I just checked the captivate EXE and Universal Silent Switch Finder 0.1 reports it as being a "Installshield 2003 installer" this might help you

This post has been edited by Thorlek: 04 May 2006 - 09:40 AM

[ophiel]

i'd like to put in a request for inno unpacking, it's becoming pretty popular.

there's an inno project at sourceforge if you're interested

[urie]

ophiel, on May 5 2006, 07:08 AM, said:

i'd like to put in a request for inno unpacking, it's becoming pretty popular.

there's an inno project at sourceforge if you're interested

Quote

I think you should at least try the program first it does unpack innosetup files

[nitro322]

Thorlek, on May 4 2006, 09:26 AM, said:

Hi, I work as an MSI packager

Man, I'm sorry. I did that myself about 3 years ago. I learned a lot of interesting stuff about how Windows works, but it got pretty old after a year or so. Hope you've found some way to keep things interesting.

Thorlek, on May 4 2006, 09:26 AM, said:

i have noticed a problem when i have tried to extract a few "Setup Launcher" EXE files i was testing your app on.

Ok, by Setup Launchers I'm assuming you're referring to the dang bootstrapped InstallShield installers? I know that supprt isn't that great for this, primarily because there's just no good standard way of dealing with them. InstallShield was the bane of my existance in my former packaging life, which was why we had standardized on Wise. I refused to contribute to the circle of pain. So, flash-forward three years and here they are causing trouble again. Sigh.

Ok, time for some details. When UniExtract detects and InstallShield package, it first tries to extract the files using IsXunpack.exe. If that fails, it prompts you about the cache method. I don't recall offhand where exactly I found this switch, but I believe it was in InstallShield's KnowledgeBase or forum. This is the specific command I run:

"\path\to\installer.msi" /b"\path\to\output"

As you stated, that'll generally extract the main program MSI. Now, for my purposes, that's generally good enough. For example, I use it on Sun's Java installer to extract the Java MSI, which I then install using msiexec.exe with my own switches.

However, I do understand that for your purposes you do need to get all of the support files as well, especially the installscript MSI. And this is where the next problem comes into play. The only method I know of getting this (if IsXunpack.exe fails) is to run the installation and try to get the files from %temp%, just as you suggested. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any predictable way to determine the temporary directory that gets created within %temp%. Without being able to predict the path, I have no way of programmatically determining which directory from which to pull the files.

Granted, I've not spent a tremendous amount of time researching this, but I haven't yet come across a good way of doing it. Do you have any suggestions on how I can locate these files in %temp%, assuming that the installer does actually create them (some installers do not)? If so, believe me, I'll be more than happy to take them into consideration.

Thorlek, on May 4 2006, 09:26 AM, said:

You can get the macromedia captive 1.0x install from here: http://www.adobe.com/go/trycaptivate

Do you happen to have a direct link? Maybe you can e-mail it to me? I don't have any desire to register an account with Adobe just to download a trial program for testing.

Thorlek, on May 4 2006, 09:26 AM, said:

Oh and there is a spelling mistake on the "main" screen when this extraction is taking place, it says "Extracting files from" IstallShield package" there is an "n" missing from InstallShield.

Thanks for the catch. I'll correct it in the next version.

Also, thanks for the feedback in general. Believe me, I know where you're coming from, and I'm more than happy to make this program even more useful for you if possible. I know I would've LOVED to have a utility like this back when I was doing that job. It's actually part of my inspiration for creating and working on this now.

This post has been edited by nitro322: 05 May 2006 - 03:03 PM

[jaclaz]

Pardon me if this is "competely" unrelated, but I just found about this program and, being it incredibly fast, maybe it can be of use to actually "search" for data and find the "temp" directory used:
NDFF
http://ndff.hotbox.ru/en/

(works on NTFS formatted partitions only)

jaclaz

[DigeratiPrime]

just saying ty for the updates, its working great