Windows Expand Tool CAB: Extracting Driver Pack Files

Windows ships with a small, easily-overlooked command-line tool called expand.exe for extracting the contents of CAB files — useful for driver packages, Windows Update packages, or any archive distributed in Microsoft’s cabinet format, without needing a third-party archiver.

Extract All Files from a CAB

expand -F:* driverpack.cab C:Extracted

The -F:* switch tells expand to extract every file in the cabinet (rather than a single named file) into the destination folder.

Extract a Single File

expand -F:ntprint.inf driverpack.cab C:Extracted

Expanding a Single Renamed Compressed File

Some older Windows source media store individual files in a compressed form with the last character of the extension replaced by an underscore (for example ntoskrnl.ex_). To decompress one of these directly to its real filename:

expand ntoskrnl.ex_ ntoskrnl.exe

Run expand /? for the full switch list — it also supports listing a cabinet’s contents without extracting anything, using -D.

Resources

• guide