Does anyone know of a program for opening a self-extracting archive as if it were a zip file? I'm really getting rather sick of the Daz .exe files, which install every file in a package even if I don't want some of them, and always installs them in places I don't want them installed. After every installation I have to tidy up, move things into the folders I want them in and delete the excess folders that the installer has rudely created. I can do without this.

You know when the installer searches for your copy of P4/5 and says "Files will be installed in the following directory"? Just hit the browse button and get everything to install to a Temp folder in your My Documents instead. All the paths will be intact so you can rename to your own conventions and then just bodily move the Runtime folder into P4/P5. That's what I do... HTH

Actually, just hit "cancel" when the installer starts searching and you can manually input wherever you want it to install to. If you then choose a temp folder for instance on your desktop, you can easily move it afterwards.

Winzip will open self-extracting files created with Winzip (and a few others, I think). Just right-click on the exe and select, "Open with Winzip." This won't work with DAZ files though; they must use a different compression method or something.

Thanks all! Using a temp directory is an excellent idea. I suspect that Daz files use a cab file within an installer program. I'm sure it must be possible to get at it somehow, if not with Winzip.

try winrar, that will open .cab files

Just tried out the temp file idea and it works a treat. The texture for the item in question was buried in a layer of unnecessary subdirectories about five levels deep! Some of us have to find these files, you know ...