Getting a Particular Single File from .EXE Installer

[The Lord of the Flies]

AFAIK, .EXE installers first extract their contents (a bunch of files 'n stuff), then installs some program according to--typically--the user clicking a series of "Next" buttons.

Well I need just a single little, bitty file from an installer program that I finally found at great length. The .EXE installer is fned '9-11_agp-hotfix_xp32_dd_ccc.exe', but all I need is the file 'atioglxx.dll' that's inside in there. And I dunno where the contents are extracted to. Windows' Search Companion with that dumb, stupid, useless dog didn't turn up any results. Par for the course, I suppose!

The '9-11_agp-hotfix_xp32_dd_ccc.exe' is an old video driver. After all the uninstalling and re-installing and all several times over so far (don't ask! please, please don't ask!), I just want what I need, that one little, bitty f***ing file hahaha!

Can the operation that I'm asking about be done? Dear God, what am I gonna do...?

Thanks in advance hehe

[bthylafh]

If the file's a self-extracting zipfile (many of those are) you can try opening it in an archiving program like IZarc or 7-zip.

[The Lord of the Flies]

Aw, God! Thanks for the quick reply!

I have the latest WinZIP. Will that do the job?

[Append:] Hmm, it seems that maybe WinZIP won't. Or the .EXE is not one of those self-extracting archives. I'll try one of those prgs mentioned hehe

[The Lord of the Flies]

Ah, thank you. I tried 7-Zip and it did that with no problem.

Unfortunately, getting that file as such as it was did not actually help my larger problem that I thought I should be doing that for. So my problems aren't exactly over yet, as they never are! Look what God does!

Ah well, on the bright side, you guys did help me with what I asked, and quickly as well. And now I know how to do that whenever I wanna/need to. ANd it seems that something like that might be useful when installing things. So, thank you very much, nice good people. hehe

[just brew it!]

I'm having a hard time imagining situations where picking a single DLL out of an old driver pacakge would solve anything. Generally the DLLs packaged up in a driver installer are intended to be used together; you're risking random flakiness/breakage if you play mix-n-match with pieces of different driver versions.

If you want to use the old driver, just install the old driver.

[bthylafh]

Are you trying to dump that file into a game's install folder to trick it into running? That worked OK for me with Return to Castle Wolfenstein not long ago, but I don't remember if that was the exact file or not.

[The Lord of the Flies]

Actually this is my real problem (among all the others, of course):
http://www.ritualistic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20479
and
http://forums.filefront.com/st-ef-problems-errors-help/429508-poor-jerky-video-performance-low-fps-elite-force-ii.html
and
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=227&threadid=140946&forumid=11
and this place too!

Ooooh, the tremendous joy of it all! *gack!* Look what God does!

Ooo! I just got another reply from that second one there. BTW, that's the one I've been trying to follow most of all to solve this mystery of a million. Ooo, this is fun!

[just brew it!]

So what happened when you tried it? Did it not have any effect?

[The Lord of the Flies]

Well...skipping to the current....

I ended up just having to uninstall the current display drivers yet again and then installing the (finally correct) older drivers in an attempt to complete the instructions in that second one.

Now Windows is its all-knowing wisdom about cyber-security is giving me s*** about installing these older drivers similar to the way it gives me s*** when installing the current drivers, but worse! Its totally preventing the installation I guess! Some dumb crap about something not being signed well enough or some s***.

Ya know, I read in some article somewhere years ago all about how MS just can't win for losing when it comes to security. Well that was years ago! But the tradtion remains! How lovely! It's like the MS security people have no f***ing idea what they are doing or how to do it, yet they try so hard anyway! Really it seems it's the consumer that can't win for losing, actually, not MS. Or at least this consumer (me) anyway.

Jesus, I KNOW the files are safe, but NOOOOooo! Windows knows better! F***in' piece of s***!

I guess there's gotta be some way to turn off that stoppage and get it in all of its abundant mercies to please, please let me install that, so that I can get that file, back it up, then uninstall those older drivers, then clean up, then re-install the current drivers, then replace the new file in there with the backed up old one, and then--proportedly--play the f***ing game so enjoyably! Yep, that's my devious and diabolical plan! No wonder God wants to stop it in its tracks! Ah, c'est la vie!

[thegleek]

Yeah yeah, why is everyone so obsessed with necro-threads? Doesn't make sense to start a brand new one that matches the exact same topic.

So, exe's. Most windows-based exe's are compiled by package tools. Some of the most used are InstallShield, Advanced Installer, Wise, nullsoft, etc...

Sometimes the icon of the exe will give you a clue on which packager was used, maybe not. You can always run the setup.exe and sometimes at the bottom somewhere it can also lead you to a clue on what was used... again, if you're lucky.

As an example, if you have an .exe using Flexera's InstallShield, you can easily decompress all the files as shown in this pdf.

Last tool I ran across is something called the Universal Extractor... Sometime it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it may also show you what the .exe was packaged with.

I hope that helps?