1

I need to unpack an old office patch in .MSP format and get some files which it carries from there.

In the past there was an MSIX tool capable of pulling out resources not just from MSIX packages, but from MSP patches as well. But it was removed from Microsoft blogs a long time ago and almost erased from the history. To hide its existence, MS even released another MSI editor, "MSIX Packaging Tool" freely available at the store. But that surrogate is incapable of unpacking packages.

Is there a way today to unpack MSPs?

I also tried Orca from early Wind10 SDK bundle, however it crashes on the latest Win10 release when trying to open any file.

Asdf
  • 146

1 Answers1

0

7-Zip can handle the MSP format. You might also try Universal Extractor. That application is no longer being developed, and I've not used it.

That said, Microsoft may have purposely made some MSP files impossible to extract without running. In that case, use a sandbox such as Sandboxie to run the file, and to capture anything extracted. This could also be done on a virtual machine, comparing the states before and after running to see the difference.

However, "MSP contains only the part that differs between the two versions of the application." That means that it might not contain the entire output file, just the means to patch an existing installation. In that case, the MSP can only be used as a patch.

DrMoishe Pippik
  • 37,887