Search MSIs |
Sometimes you'd like to search a large number of MSIs for something.
I have used the following in a batch file to search through the Windows Installer cache directory ("c:\windows\Installer" - a hidden directory):
del c:\tmp\Props.txt >nul 2>&1 for %%f in (*.msi) do cscript.exe //NoLogo "c:\Program Files\MAKEMSI\MmDocumentProperties.VBS" %%f >> c:\tmp\Props.txt start notepad.exe c:\tmp\Props.txt
The above used the VBSCRIPT installed by MAKEMSI for the "Display a file's Properties" option. It allows me to quickly identify the cached MSI for a particular product (without having to know GUIDs etc).
If you wanted to do the above over a whole directory tree or drive then you use a "sweep" program like "sweep32.exe".
Agent Ransack |
The above demonstrated a simple no tools option, unfortunately the usefulness of this is limited. The crippled Windows Explorer search doesn't work for MSIs and the "find.exe" utility also fails.
If you simply wish to know if an MSI contains some specific text then you can use a free tool such as "Agent Ransack" to search *.MSI for the text you specify.