Tip 102: Create Self-extracting / Self-installing packages the easy way

Strangely enough Microsoft always seems to manage to quietly provide us with some very handy and useful tools without telling you about them and on top of that hiding them well too. One such tool is IExpress, which basically serves as a GUI front-end to the Microsoft Cabinet Maker also present in Windows XP.

IExpress is a wizard that enables you to quickly put together a package to:

  • extract files and run an installation command
  • extract files only
  • create compressed files only
You can provide a Package Title, Comfirmation Prompt for install, Display a license agreement from self-provided file, obviously add the necessary files, indicate the installation program to run, how to display the installation window (minimized or so), a finishing message, package name, options to hide the extraction progress and what to do with long filenames, wether or not to restart after install and if the user needs to confirm this.

Once you run the package it self-extracts and possibly self-installs on the target system.

Simply start the wizard through: Start | Run | iexpress <enter> and follow the instructions.

So far I've found that the wizard does not take too kindly to duplicate filenames coming from different sub-directories or folders and that sometimes it is difficult to get the correct source path-information into the package. However, with a little planning these situations can easily be overcome.

Incidentally, while working with this little toy, you might also want to check out makecab.exe in your windows\system32 folder. Enjoy!