wolstech

I know this is a really old topic now, 9 months ago...but I might as well post this for the others who stumble across this and find themselves wondering about IPD and how to unpack it without running the package. Since nobody could figure out how to unpack IPD without the stubs...here's an IPD unpacker that doesn't require the SFX stub...http://raxdev.raxsoft.com/unpackipd.zip Be aware it's a compiled Autoit script with packed files, some AVs might kick a false positive on it. Command line and GUI versions included. Extract the CAB with 7-zip or the like, then point this tool to the folder with _sfx_manifest_ in it... Also, for what it's worth, I'm the primary author of SFXCAB Substitute. I never really maintained the app because I didn't realize there was actually a demand for this thing. I built its predecessor IPDTool in boredom one day while looking for a challenge. SFXCAB Substitute came about when I built Hotfix Hacker (a GUI tool for creating basic update.exe-based update installers) and needed a way to finish the compile process. I figured I might as well release it separately as well since it's already built...so I threw in a readme and stuck it on Softpedia for laughs. Expand.exe is the wrong way to unpack the SFXCAB IPD stuff, at least for NT5.x Windows Updates and stuff made with Substitute. You need mspatcha and an understanding of the manifest. You can unpack it manually, one file at a time, by opening the manifest in notepad and using apatch.exe (also from the SDK, it's the CLI for mspatcha.dll) in CMD. I'm not familar with msdelta, so can't speak to that one. The only thing Substitute does different from MS is that it will auto-exclude files from IPD if they get larger when packed. Those files get regular LZX instead. I've found MS IPD archives that had this issue, which means in theory Substitute will get slightly better compression with the same technology. Happy Holidays guys