April 08, 2002
Hello All,
As many of you already know, Sony packages all of their software updates in Install Shield Wizard applications. I believe Sony does this to protect us dumb end users from installing the wrong driver or update on the wrong machine.
When you run a Sony update software package, the Install Shield Wizard checks model numbers and OSes to make sure that the application is safe to install on the computer. Unfortunately, for various reasons, this checking of model numbers and OSes also tends to prevent us from using drivers that are OK for our computer. Thankfully there is a way to get the driver or application out of the Install Shield Wizard so that it can be installed.
I have decided to document how to extract applications from the Install Shield Wizard. To extract an application or driver update distributed by Sony in an Install Shield Wizard package you will need two (2) utilities;
For the ZIP extractor utility I recommend WinZip. Any ZIP extraction tool will work though. However, I don't think that you can use the built in ZIP capability of WinME or WinXP.
The i6comp utility is the key. This utility can extract the contents of the Install Shield Wizard CAB files. i6comp was developed by morlac specifically to allow extraction of Install Shield Wizard CAB files. The utility is available from multiple locations. Just do a search on google for i6comp. Here is a link to the utility. i6comp for Windows ver0.20 122KB.
For this example I am going to use the modem driver for WinXP for the FX210/FX215. The Install Shield file is COC522XNKH.EXE . This file is available from Sony Support.
Step 1 is to extract the Install Shield Cab files from the app file downloaded from Sony. Using WinZip this is very easy. Select the COC522XNKH.EXE file then RIGHT mouse button drag the file to a temp directory when you release the RIGHT mouse button a menu will appear asking what to do.
Choose the second option 
to extract the Install Shield Wizard CAB files. You should now have a directory
with the following files in it.
Delete everything but data1.cab, data1.hdr, and data2.cab. You should be left with the following files.
Now you need the i6comp utility. The .exe file for i6comp is in the release subdirectory of i6comp. Before using i6comp I strongly recommend reading all of the readme files that come with the utility. In the readme files the author morlac recommends putting the i6comp.exe file into your main windows or winnt subdirectory. This is a good idea because with the file in your path statement it is executable whenever you need it.
i6comp is a command line program. To use it you need to open a DOS command or NT cmd line window and change to the subdirectory where you extracted the Install Shield Wizard CAB files.
The trick to using i6comp is to figure out which command line options to use. If you type i6comp at the command line a list of all the options will appear.
The command line options you will need to use are the following
e -- to extract files
-r -- to extract subdirs/recurse and store subdirs
The complete command line to use to extract the files out of the .cab files is;
i6comp e -r data1.cab
All of the files stored in the .cab files will be placed into the directory that you are in. If a directory structure was stored in the .cab files that directory structure will also be present.
Notice that the original data1.cab, data1.hdr, and data2.cab are still present. These files can now be deleted. You don't need them anymore.
You are done. If there is a setup or install file present in the extracted files you can run the .exe now.
Please be careful. You are bypassing all the safety checks that Sony has built in to the driver or application. It is possible that if you have made a mistake and downloaded the wrong driver or application that installing it will corrupt the OS on your laptop.
Good Luck. As always if you have questions or comments feel free to e-mail me.
Later,
Brad
bhite@rocketmail.com
