Talk:EXE

I think there is also .NET executable format which is also based on the DOS format (with a stub). I think PlayStation also uses the EXE extension, although the file format may be unrelated. --Zzo38 (talk) 23:37, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Installers and self-extracting archives sharing EXE extension

I am unsure how to best phrase this case, but there should be a section on the main page explaining alternative uses of EXE, which includes the likes of self-extracting archives and software installers using the likes of InstallShield, Inno Setup, etc. In corner cases, especially those who are not using Windows environments, may find running software installers in particular… untrustworthy. Therefore I propose a work-in-progress method of extracting files from these software installers.

Inno Setup via innoextract

innoextract is one such project that could be used to extract the contents of Inno Setup without running the actual setup executable under Windows or using Wine.

Examples

Extract example.exe to a directory named example:

 innoextract --extract example.exe --output-dir example

Extract example2.exe using Japanese codepage, and use Japan's timezone as file timestamps, into example2 directory:

 TZ=Asia/Japan innoextract --extract example2.exe --codepage 932 --timestamp local --output-dir example2

Extract example2.exe using Japanese codepage, Japan's timezone as timestamps, and files with Japanese localizations into example2-ja directory:

 TZ=Asia/Japan innoextract --extract example2.exe --codepage 932 --timestamp local --output-dir example2-ja --language ja

Same as above but for English localizations, and into example2-en directory instead:

 TZ=Asia/Japan innoextract --extract example2.exe --codepage 932 --timestamp local --output-dir example2-en --language en

InstallShield via unshield

unshield is one such project that could be used to extract the contents of InstallShield.

Examples

List the contents of example.exe:

 unshield l example.exe

Extract example.exe:

 unshield x example.exe

Anonymoususer852 (talk) 05:25, 2 August 2025 (UTC)