Download Less MSIerables

Less MSIérables is a free and useful tool that can Extract the contents of an .msi File.

I'm not a fan of Microsoft's .msi installer files. They're slow, they don't let me pick start menu groups, and they are a major overkill for lots of tiny program installations that I use where a simple rar file (okay zip would work too) would be much more suitable. So sometime last year I spent a night hacking together a simple tool that lets me take these miserable .msi files and extract their contents. Since others may find it useful too, I figured I'd put it out here.

It works from the command line, has a simple form that lets you extract files and view msi tables. Let me warn you the first time you run it, it will add an "Extract" item to the right-click menu in explorer when right-clicking on .msi files (the added registry entry is made at /RegistryHKEY_CLASSES_ROOTMsi.PackageshellExtractcommand). Thanks to the WiX project for the handy utility classes for working with msi files and awesome reference on msi internals.