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Universal Extractor


nitro322

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Very useful utility. I suggest adding some more formats, e.g.

- Generic Zlib/Flate-compressed streams (many "unknown" installers use Flate/Zlib compression, so this would be *very* useful)

I'm not familiar with this. Could you please direct me to information on how to decompress this type of file, as well as an example compressed file that I could test with? Assuming there are no technical limitations involved, I'd be happy to add support.

- Nullsoft Installers (NSIS) + Bzip2 and LZMA compressions - open-source

I'd love to add support for NSIS installers. If you'll check out my ToDo file, you'll see that it's one of the two specific formats that I'd still like to add. However, to my knowledge there's currently no possible way to extract files from NSIS installers. If you know of a way, please let me know!

Does it support UPX?

By supporting UPX, do you mean simply de-UPXing a packed .exe? Or do you mean extracting files from self-extracting archives that have been further compressed with UPX? If it's the latter, then yes it does (for recognized signatures). If it's the former, however, it does not.

I had considered it, but didn't really see the value in it. Could you explain why this would be a useful feature? What practical benefit would it give you? I'm certainly open to it, but I'd like to know why.

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Very useful utility. I suggest adding some more formats, e.g.

- Generic Zlib/Flate-compressed streams (many "unknown" installers use Flate/Zlib compression, so this would be *very* useful)

I'm not familiar with this. Could you please direct me to information on how to decompress this type of file, as well as an example compressed file that I could test with? Assuming there are no technical limitations involved, I'd be happy to add support.

Here's a *very* simple implementation that allows the decompression and compression of Zlib files: http://www.dogma.net/markn/articles/zlibtool/zlibtool.htm

I've been using that demo program above to manually unpack installers that use Flate/Zlib, and can say that it works quite well for the purpose.

- Nullsoft Installers (NSIS) + Bzip2 and LZMA compressions - open-source

I'd love to add support for NSIS installers. If you'll check out my ToDo file, you'll see that it's one of the two specific formats that I'd still like to add. However, to my knowledge there's currently no possible way to extract files from NSIS installers. If you know of a way, please let me know!

Can you write a decompressor for it? It's open-source, so most of the decompression code is freely available and ready for use. Basically just the installer without the "installation" portion.
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Here's a *very* simple implementation that allows the decompression and compression of Zlib files: http://www.dogma.net/markn/articles/zlibtool/zlibtool.htm

I've been using that demo program above to manually unpack installers that use Flate/Zlib, and can say that it works quite well for the purpose.

I downloaded the source code, but I have no way to build it. Do you know of any precompiled binaries I can download? If not, could you post/e-mail a binary you've built? Also, could you point me to an installer that uses this type of compression? If I have a binary that can do the extraction and test it on a package, I should be able to add support for it pretty easily.

Can you write a decompressor for it? It's open-source, so most of the decompression code is freely available and ready for use. Basically just the installer without the "installation" portion.

You're definitely overestimating my programming abilities. :-) I can script like a madman, but I know very little about low-level development. As noted above, I can't even compile a simple, ready-made demo program under Windows (I'm a bit better in Linux, however).

If anyone ever does write an extractor for NSIS packages, I'll most definitely add support for it. Until then, however, I'm afraid there isn't much I can do.

Edited by nitro322
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it would be great to create a tool that could extract files from NSIS installers. I'm not sure, but I saw a compressor that creates SFX archives very, very, very similar to NSIS installers. UHARC GUI. I don't know if the files are compressed the same way, but maybe someone could take a look at it.

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I did a little bit of research on UHARC. It looks like this is a method of compression that can be used by NSIS when creating the installers, but after compression an SFX "wrapper" is applied to the package. This is what allows users to double-click on the setup.exe and begin the installation process. Without decoding that part, it's impossible to decompress anything encapsulated.

Shoot. :(

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I noticed that this wonderful application uses 7zip technology. Is it possible to add file associations to Universal Extractor? Since it is like having 7zip installed, might as well use that functionality with *.zip and *.7z files as well. Just a thought.

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I noticed that this wonderful application uses 7zip technology. Is it possible to add file associations to Universal Extractor? Since it is like having 7zip installed, might as well use that functionality with *.zip and *.7z files as well. Just a thought.

I'm not sure I follow you. Are you talking about being able to right-click on files in Windows Explorer and extract from the context menu? If so, that capability is already included. You'll need to use the installer version, though, as the self-extracting version does not support this functionality.

If you're referring to something else, though, well.. you lost me. :) Could you please explain a little more?

Thanks.

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  • 1 month later...
Hi nitro322!

Any news about including NSIS installer?

Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find any utility capable of extracting NSIS installers. I can promise you that it will be included as soon as I do, though, as this is my number one todo item.

If anyone finds (or manages to write themselves) a utility that can do this, please let me know. I, and I'm sure a great many others, would be quite grateful. :-)

Edited by nitro322
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Hello Nitro,

I've just discover your application and would like to say that's really usefull.

Just one request,

I mainly use portable apps on an USB key so I do not install your app and don't have context menu.

So is it possible for you to allow drag an drop of file to extract in your extraction window in addition ?

Very nice job anyway.

Regards

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Hello Nitro,

I've just discover your application and would like to say that's really usefull.

Just one request,

I mainly use portable apps on an USB key so I do not install your app and don't have context menu.

So is it possible for you to allow drag an drop of file to extract in your extraction window in addition ?

Very nice job anyway.

Regards

just drag and drop the file you wish to extract over UniExtract.exe (or a shortcut pointing to that) and it will automatically fill in the fields. ;)

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Hi DigeratiPrime,

Thanks for the tips, work fine, but it's not very easy to get the prog and the file to extract in the same directory to do it easily.

I mainly store my progs on an usb key and use pstart as program launcher, so I can drag an drop directly over the universal extractor shortcut, that's why I was asking.

Anyway it's not a big deal to go and get the prog to extract thru the UE interface.

Regards

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