Cannot extract FEAD archive from HP

[Guest Maxime000]

Hello,

I've tried to extract a FEAD archive found on the HP FTP site.

HP has packed the driver files using this "optimizer". Problem: it is difficult/impossible to run the installer on older machines (Win 98) so I wanted to extract the file first on another machine… But that didn't work.

I'm using Universal Extractor v1.6 (on Windows XP Pro SP3 x86) and even if it's said it has

Added support for FEAD Optimizer packages (eg, Adobe Reader installers)

I can't extract the file.

The file is downloadable from this address

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software7/COL14044/bi-39333-2/

if anyone want to test it

I'd really appreciate any help on that. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE:

I've found the command line parameter that allows extraction of a FEAD archive :

archive.exe -nos_ne -nos_o"C:\FEAD_Extracted"

it's unpacking all the files correctly.

Problem solved. Somehow.

Edited March 26, 2009 by Maxime000

[nitro322]

FEAD support does exist, but like many formats in UniExtract it relies on accurate filetype detection. I was using TrID to detect FEAD files, but it wasn't very reliable - it would detect FEAD files with a low degree of confidence, but it'd also detect other executables as FEAD as well, leading to false positives. I tried to compensate by having it do some extra checks, but this wasn't very reliable either.

So... for 1.6.1 I downloaded as many FEAD packages as I could find (which basically consists of the one you linked to and a bunch of versions of Adobe Reader) and generated some new signatures using PEiD rather than TrID. So far it seems to be much more reliable for this. Give 1.6.1 a show when it's released and see if it works for you.

In the meantime, if anyone comes across other FEAD packages that aren't detected properly please let me know and I'll update the PEiD signature for future releases.