Where is the location on the extracted .msi file?

Question

I have a setup exe, and I want its .msi file for administrative installation (see https://superuser.com/questions/307678/how-to-extract-files-from-msi-package)

But, although I see at the beginning the extraction of .msi, I can't find it.

Where is the location of this file?

Answer 1

Usually MSI file(s) might be extracted in different temp locations depends from who was launched (User\System\etc) and how configured setup.exe. Sometimes you can extract it with help of different command-line switches for setup.exe.

The simple way to check - launch it under user account, go to %temp% folder, most likely there should be created folder with {GUID_view_name}. Inside this folder you will find MSI file.

User's %temp% folder has different location in different Windows versions:
Windows XP\2000\2003:

"C:\Documents and settings\{user name}\Local settings\Temp" or "%userprofile%\local settings\temp"

Windows Vista\7\8\2008\2012

"C:\Users\{user name}\AppData\Local\Temp" or "%userprofile%\appdata\local\temp"

P.S. Also you can check this SO question-answer.

Answer 2

Snapshot a clean VM and use a program such as Install Watcher or InCntrl to record the current state of the file system. Run the setup.exe until you are on the first dialog of the MSI and take another recording. Diff and look for where the MSI and related support files appear.

Answer 3

I found a much better solution, Igor, gave me the idea.

I used ProcessMonitor and filtered with Process is "msiexec.exe" and Path ends with ".msi".

I found the msi in:

C:\ProgramData\Downloaded Installations\{41A70E83-DA5D-4CA6-9779-73C9330E3D13}\IQProtector64.msi