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totoymola

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  1. Hacking WinRAR SFX for customized installers - INTENDED FOR BEGINNERS Introduction Creating a customized look for your WinRAR SFX archives is a very easy task, but not all people know how to do it. A good example of a customized SFX is Nero. As we all know, Nero uses WinRAR to compress it’s setup files. But the SFX window has a Nero banner on it and the EXE has a custom Nero icon. So if you wan’t to create your custom installer of Nero (Please visit SiMoNsAyS' guide) and you still wan’t to make your installer look like the original, this is the best way to do it. But this is not just about Nero. You can do this if you wan’t to have a custom look on your repacked SFX’s. This is what I’ve learned from my experience. If you have any suggestions or corrections, please let me know. In that way, you can help me learn from my mistakes, and discover new things. By the way, I would like to thank sixpack for giving me the idea of working with SFX files. Things needed (ALL FREE/SHAREWARE) Default.SFX (Download at the bottom of this page.) ResHack Nice icon Banner (24bit bitmap, 93x302, and as small as possible) Optional tools PETITE – to compress the EXE OR UPX which has a better compression (Thanks to RyanVM for introducing UPX) Axialis Icon Workshop – to edit your icons (you can use other softwares if you want) Part I – Hacking the SFX file 1) Extract the file “Default.SFX from the original WinRAR installer and rename it to WHATEVER.SFX. Or if you have WinRAR installed on your system, you can get that file from your [iNSTALLDIR]. Or you can just download the file at the bottom of this page. Just in case you don’t know, this file is actually an EXE with the .SFX extension. Please note that you CANNOT use the Default.SFX of a GUI patched version of WinRAR. 2) Open your SFX file with ResHack. Click “Action  Replace Icon” to replace the stock icon. 3) Do the same thing with the bitmap. Clck “Action  Replace Bitmap” and replace the default bitmap. 4) Save it, and you’re done. Here are some pictures to help you follow the instructions if you are lost. Part II – Compressing the EXE You have to make your SFX file as small as possible. Because the bigger your SFX file, the bigger SFX archive you will have. But don’t worry. PETITE is the perfect tool that will help us make our SFX file smaller. 1) Run the file PETGUI.EXE and open your SFX file. 2) Uncheck “All non icon/version-info…”, check “Backup”, and set the compression to Level 9. 3) Click “Start”, and you’re done. EDIT: UPX'S compression is better. Thanks to RyanVM. Download UPX here: http://upx.sourceforge.net/ Usage: UPX -k --best Default.SFX The "-k and --best" switches are case sensitive. Optional If you have Axialis Icon Workshop or other icon editor software, you can use it to edit your icon file before using it to replace the default icon of the SFX file. This is another good way to make a small hacked SFX file. We only need the 48x48, 32x32, and 16x16 Windows XP and 256 color icons. You can safely delete all other icon files in you icon to make it smaller. Test After creating a hacked SFX file, you can test it by rename it to EXE. Rename your WHATEVER.SFX to WHATEVER.SFX.EXE, to see how nice your icon is, and run it. Usage Now, to use your customized SFX file, just copy it to your WinRAR’s [iNSTALLDIR]. When you make an SFX archive, just select your SFX file in “Advanced  SFX Options  Module”. Or to make it simple, don’t rename the Default.SFX, and copy it over the original Default.SFX in your [iNSTALLDIR]. Good luck, and have fun! B) PS. I’m not good in graphics (especially Adobe Photoshop), so my banner really sucks. It would be nice if someone can help me make a good one. And please, don't ask me how to change the GUI of WinRAR, because I don't know how. Hmm.. Maybe I do.. But I'm not good in graphix! Default.SFX
  2. Why don't you just edit the original autorun.inf form your cd?
  3. Or, if you install Yahoo Messenger to your system from the web, go to your %programfiles%\Yahoo\Install and you will find the full installer there.
  4. I know this is a little off topic, but if you're concerned about speed, try this. http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks...foxtweak/4.html B)
  5. No. It is an open source program. I also use it for my Firefox msi's. As long as you don't claim to be the author of the program, you will not have any problem. Just be sure to include the original EULA. I have the setup backgrounds of firefox. PM me if you want to have a copy.
  6. or if you have some extra money to spend, try installshield, wise or setup factory. but if you want a free software, try MCT's suggestion. Inno setup is good. Well, NSIS is good to, but I personaly don't know how to use it.
  7. Thanks maxXPsoft and durex for the tip. I'm gonna try it. So what should be the value of the entries here? HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop
  8. Thank for you ideas. maxXPsoft and durex, sorry but I don't understand it well. Can you give me an example? Nologic, yeah, AutoIt will do this for sure. But I'm not yet good at scripting with AutoIt.
  9. Yes. WinRAR is very usefull! I thing your comment will not work because you missed the quotes. It has to be Path="%UserProfile%\Application Data\.BitTornado\icons" But this is what I will do. Path=%appdata%\.BitTornado\icons Edit: Your comment works. No need to add quotes. WinRAR really rocks!
  10. Right. By the way, there is something that confuses me. BitTornado (from the original installer) automatically creates a folder named .Bittornado in your %appdata% on first run. But if you try to create a folder manually using Windows Explorer, it will not allow you to create a folder like that. It doesn't allow you to to create a folder using .(dot) as the first character of the name. However, if you type md .bittornado in the command prompt, it will create a .bittornado folder for you. Is this a limitation in Windows?
  11. Hmmm.. That makes sense. Just like in the command CD.. in DOS.
  12. How can I do this? If it is in the Quick Launch, it is easy. But I don't know how to make a new toolbar. Thanks.
  13. That is correct because it uses NSIS. I only made this msi because I wan't to make some changes to the default.
  14. Yeah. That's about it.
  15. Oh yeah. I forgot to include that in the description. I also added those icons. .And the icons of the lights too. Those icons are not the default But you can change them anytime you want. Just download the icons from their website and extract them to your %appdata%\.bittornado\icons. Or just delete that folder if you want to go back to the default icons. These icons are not included in the latest build. So you are one step ahead.
  16. I build this a few weeks ago, and I use the latest stable build. That is 0.39a. Icons only.
  17. Hmm... How about an msi? This is a modified version of BitTornado. I changed the icons of the exe, and the icons of the torrent files, add/remove icon, etc. In short, it looks better than the original. BitTornado 0.39a.msi Download here: http://tinyurl.com/3wtkd
  18. From that error message, I think you misstyped the location. That happens to me all the time. Well, I don't know about isntalling dreamweaver silently.
  19. Here is another link. All the files are in a single archive, so you only have to wait 40 seconds once instead of three times. Download link: http://tinyurl.com/5q7rx
  20. Really? No switches needed to install it? That's cool. What is that? Msiexec embeded with the msi? But I find it kinda useless, because it is very easy to add /qb at the end of the command. But anyway, I will try to figure out how to do that too.
  21. What happens if you install the msi from beast trunk? I didn't try it. I'm just curious why is it not working. I tried opening the msi, and it has a lot of missing files. Maybe that's why it doesn't work 100%.
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