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.

Still Present in Current Windows

expand.exe remains a built-in tool in current Windows 10 and Windows 11 releases — unlike some older command-line utilities that have been deprecated or removed over the years, it hasn’t been touched, and the syntax above works identically whether you’re on an old Windows 7 machine pulling apart legacy driver media or a current Windows 11 build.

The PowerShell Alternative

If you’d rather stay in PowerShell than drop to a classic command prompt, Expand-Archive handles ZIP files but doesn’t natively support CAB — for CAB extraction specifically, calling the same expand.exe tool from within a PowerShell script (expand -F:* driverpack.cab C:\Extracted works exactly the same there) is still the simplest route rather than reaching for a third-party module.

Listing Contents Without Extracting

Worth calling out separately since it’s easy to miss in the switch list: expand -D driverpack.cab lists every file inside the cabinet without extracting anything, which is handy for confirming you’ve got the right CAB file before committing to a full extraction, especially with large driver packs.