Update an MSI Installer without rebuilding

In many development environments, updating outdated Installers of the development tools can be challenging.

In most cases, the original development environment used for generating the installer will be no longer available. In such cases, an installer can be disassembled, changes be applied and reassembled back using MS installer APIs.

Steps

1. Extract the contents of the installer to a temp location. For example,

msiexec.exe  /a xxxx.msi targetdir=d:\temp  /quiet

This step will create following file structure

d:\temp

    xxxx.msi 

    WinRoot

        Temp

              <files to be deployed>

The xxxx.msi under d:\temp is barred off the installation files, which are stored in d:\temp\WinRoot\Temp folder. Any changes required can be applied here,

2. After the changes, the MSI can be assembled back using the following command.

cscript WiMakCab.vbs d:\temp\IW_eIFU.msi  Data1  /U /E /S /C

The VBScript file WiMakCab.vbs can be downloaded from this location.

The installer file xxxx.msi under d:\temp  now will contain the new changes.

It's also possible to do much more than this, for example update GUIDs etc. This is implemented in this post.

Source and Binaries can be found here.