Expand Command-Line Options
3/21/2011
Expand.exe expands one or more compressed update files. When you view or extract the contents of a product update package for Windows Embedded Standard 7, for example, a security update, an important update, or an update rollup, the files that are shown or extracted may not include all the files that are actually updated by the package.
Standard 7 uses Intra-Package Delta (IPD) compression technology to reduce the size of packages. If you do not use a compression tool that supports IPD to extract the update, the extracted files resemble the following output:
_manifest_.cix.xml
0
1
2
…
This behavior occurs if all the following conditions are true:
- You did not use Expand.exe from Windows Embedded Standard 7 Toolkit to open the update.
- The update uses IPD compression technology.
Expand.exe for Standard 7 supports expanding files in IPD-compressed updates for inspection. You must use the Expand.exe version released with Standard 7 Toolkit or the Standard 7 operating system. Earlier versions of Expand.exe do not support extracting IPD-compressed data.
Expand.exe is also available in Standard 7.
Where to Find Expand
In order to run expand.exe on a computer that has Windows Embedded Standard 7 Toolkit installed, open the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 3.0 Tools Command Prompt. This will load the Standard 7 environment variables and allow you to use expand.exe from your command prompt.
Alternatively, to copy expand.exe to a storage device or a remote location, you can find expand.exe at the following locations, where C is the drive on which you installed Standard 7 and E is a DVD drive containing the Standard 7.installation media. If you use the following sample, replace <device architecture> with x86 or AMD64, depending upon your device architecture.
C:\Program Files\Windows Embedded Studio\Tools\<device architecture>\Servicing
E:\Windows Embedded Studio\Program Files\Windows Embedded Studio\Tools\<device architecture>\Servicing
Note
If your development computer uses a 64-bit architecture, your installation location will change to C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Embedded Studio.
Expand Command-Line Options
Expand.exe uses the following conventions.
expand [-r] source [destination] [-d source.cab [**-f:files]] [source.cab [-f:**files destination]
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
[-r] |
Renames expanded files. |
[destination] |
Specifies where files are to be expanded. If source is multiple files and -r is not specified, <destination> must be a directory. <destination> can consist of a drive letter and colon, a directory name, a file name, or a combination of any of these. |
[-d source.cab] |
Displays a list of files in the source location. Does not expand or extract the files. |
[-f:files] |
Specifies the files in a CAB file that you intend to expand. You can use wildcard characters (* and ?). |
source.cab |
Specifies the set of files to expand. source can consist of a drive letter and colon, a directory name, a file name, or a combination. You can use wildcard characters (* and ?). |
[/?] |
Displays Help at a command prompt. |
Examples
The following examples show you how to use the Expand.exe tool.
expand [-r] source [destination]
expand -d source.cab [-f:files]
expand source.cab -f:files destination