InstallShield Z

File Format
Name	InstallShield Z
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving InstallShield Z
Extension(s)	.z, .lib
Wikidata ID	Q28758103

InstallShield Z format is a compressed archive format used by version 3 of the InstallShield installation software. Documentation is lacking but it has been partially decoded and implemented by open source projects.

It uses PKWARE DCL Implode compression.

Identification

Files begin with bytes 13 5D 65 8C 3A 01 02 00.

See also

• InstallShield CAB (successor format)
• InstallShield installer archive

Software

• Universal Extractor
• InstallShield File Compressor: Official compressor/decompressor utility (Windows command-line). Several different versions of it can be found on the internet (as icomp.zip, icompx.zip, icomp95.zip, ...). Included with Universal Extractor.
• Open source InstallShield v3 extractor (C++)
• Open source InstallShield v3 extractor (Pascal & Assembly)
• Free implementation of PKware "explode" algorithm (C)
• isextract
• Deark

Sample files

• http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction24b/GOLF/ → *.Z, *.LIB
• http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction40/DEER/ → *.Z, *.LIB
• http://cd.textfiles.com/hotgames/KidsEMail/ → *.z, _SETUP.LIB
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/installShieldZ/