How could I extract drivers from a MSI file without installing them to a machine? Need to get files inside a .msi package? Yesterday I got a help request from a client who wanted to import Surface laptop drivers into PCUnlocker, and the driver packages from Microsoft are in .msi format. When opening a single .msi file using the freeware 7-Zip, we found the filenames are totally unreadable.

Eventually we found the solution. In this tutorial we’d like to share the correct method of extracting drivers or files from a .MSI package without installing them to your system.

How to Extract Drivers or Files from .MSI without Installing

1. Right-click the Start button in the taskbar and select Terminal (Admin).

   

2. To extract files from a .msi package, type the following command and press Enter. Make sure you replace path_to_msi_file with the path of your .msi file, and replace path_to_output_folder with your destination folder.
   MSIEXEC /a path_to_msi_file /qb TARGETDIR=path_to_output_folder

   

3. The installer will display a simple progress UI while unpacking.

   

4. When the unpacking is done, just open File Explorer and browse to your destination folder. You can then find the extracted drivers or files there.

That’s it!