IExpress - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

IExpress is a Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

utility bundled with various editions of Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

operating systems (32-bit and 64-bit): Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

, Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...

, Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. It was also included as part of all Internet Explorer Administration Kit

Internet Explorer Administration Kit

Internet Explorer Administration Kit , was an add-on to Internet Explorer to let an organization customize IE for their needs, released by Microsoft. Knowledge of the IEAK is tested on for MCSE...

releases 4, 5 and 6, and was part of all installations of Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems...

.
IEXPRESS.EXE is used to create a single self-extracting package

Self-extracting archive

A self-extracting archive is a computer application which contains a file archive, as well as programming to extract this information. Such file archives do not require a second executable file or program to extract from the archive, as archive files usually require...

from a set of files. Such packages can be used to install applications, executables, drivers, other system components, or setup bootstrappers.

About the tool

IExpress (IEXPRESS.EXE) can be used for distributing self-contained installation packages (INF

INF file

An INF file or Setup Information file, is a plain text file used by Microsoft Windows for installation of software and drivers. INF files are most commonly used for installing device drivers for hardware components. Windows includes IExpress.exe for the creation of INF-based installations...

-based setup executables) to multiple local or remote Windows computers. It creates a self-extracting executable (.EXE) or a compressed Cabinet (.CAB

Cabinet (file format)

In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack and Windows Installer.Though Cabinet was originally called Diamond, its .CAB...

) file using either the provided front end interface (IExpress Wizard), or a custom Self Extraction Directive (SED) file. SED files can be modified with any plain text/ASCII editor, like Notepad. All self-extracting files created by IExpress use CAB

Cabinet (file format)

compression algorithms, are compressed using the MakeCab (MAKECAB.EXE) tool, and are extracted using the WExtract (WEXTRACT.EXE) tool.

IEXPRESS.EXE is located in the SYSTEM32 folder of Windows 32-bit installations. The front end interface (IExpress Wizard) can be started by manually navigating to the respective directory and opening the executable (IExpress.exe), or by typing IExpress into the Run window of the Start Menu. It can also be used from the command line (DOS console or batch file) to create custom installation packages, eventually unattended (automated operation):

IEXPRESS /N drive_letter:\directory_name\file_name.SED

Creating a self-extracting package

IExpress Wizard interface guides the user through the process of creating a self-extracting package. It asks what the package should do: extract files and then run a program, or just extract files. It then allows the user to specify a title for the package, add a confirmation prompt, add a license agreement that the end-user must accept in order to allow extraction, select files to be archived, set display options for the progress window, and finally, specify a message to display upon completion.
If the option to create an archive and run a program is selected, then there will be an additional step, prompting the user to select the program that will be run upon extraction.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.