Monday, November 21, 2011
MSI Explorer
I have previously covered PeStudio and Kaliro App Explorer, the former utility offers a detailed overview of application compatibility with Windows OS editions and let users verify different characteristics for application’s DEP/ASLR and other included features while latter being a simple simple tool to verify Microsoft .Net framework based applications. Today we have another useful inspection tool called MSI Explorer, as its name implies, it has been designed to analyze MSI (Microsoft Installer) packages.
According to the developer, it is primarily developed to prevent users from opening/rebuilding the entire setup project for changing MSI package content, since it lists down every little detail a developer needs to know about MSI package along with exact location. Altering a MSI package would certainly be easy once you know the location of embedded content (library/feature/function, etc).
The application interface offers a nice broad layout to thoroughly look for the elements in a specified MSI package. The most significant feature is that you can update MSI content without rebuilding the whole setup. All that is required is to open an MSI package from Main menu. Once specified, it will take some time to lists down included content.
I have previously covered PeStudio and Kaliro App Explorer, the former utility offers a detailed overview of application compatibility with Windows OS editions and let users verify different characteristics for application’s DEP/ASLR and other included features while latter being a simple simple tool to verify Microsoft .Net framework based applications. Today we have another useful inspection tool called MSI Explorer, as its name implies, it has been designed to analyze MSI (Microsoft Installer) packages.
According to the developer, it is primarily developed to prevent users from opening/rebuilding the entire setup project for changing MSI package content, since it lists down every little detail a developer needs to know about MSI package along with exact location. Altering a MSI package would certainly be easy once you know the location of embedded content (library/feature/function, etc).
The application interface offers a nice broad layout to thoroughly look for the elements in a specified MSI package. The most significant feature is that you can update MSI content without rebuilding the whole setup. All that is required is to open an MSI package from Main menu. Once specified, it will take some time to lists down included content.
Once you’ve made changes to the table, from Main menu, click Commit Changes to update the package.
The application also enables user to export tables in bulk. It lists down all the included tables, you can select as many required and export them in one go.
The application proves useful for those who package their application/development projects in MSI format. It supports Windows XP/Vista/7, testing was done on Windows 7 x86 system.
