setup30

Extract old InstallShield 3-style .Z, _SETUP.LIB, and numbered multipart archives on modern systems. It can also take a classic self-extracting InstallShield installer .exe and do the intermediate FILE resource extraction for you.

These files are not plain Unix .Z archives. They contain:

• a small InstallShield footer table
• per-file TTCOMP-compressed member streams

Modern tools like 7z and unshield usually do not handle this format directly.

What it does

setup30.py:

• accepts old .Z / _SETUP.LIB archives, numbered multipart sets such as DATA.1 / DATA.2, or a compatible self-extracting installer .exe
• extracts installer FILE resources itself when given a self-extracting installer
• parses the old InstallShield footer
• finds member names, offsets, and compressed sizes
• reconstructs disk-spanning TTCOMP members across numbered archive parts
• expands each TTCOMP member directly in Python
• optionally unzips extracted .zip members
• writes a manifest.json describing the extraction

Requirements

• Python 3.10+

Usage

python setup30.py DATA.Z SYSTEM.Z JAVA.Z _SETUP.LIB -o out

For numbered multipart archives:

python setup30.py DATA.1 -o out

From a classic self-extracting installer:

python setup30.py n32d304.exe -o out

With intermediate TTCOMP streams preserved:

python setup30.py DATA.Z -o out --keep-ttcomp

Without auto-unzipping extracted ZIP members:

python setup30.py DATA.Z -o out --no-unzip

Output layout

For input DATA.Z, output looks like:

out/
  DATA.Z/
    netscape.exe
    NPAUDIO.DLL
    NPAVI.ZIP
    ...
  manifest.json

For multipart input such as DATA.1, output is grouped by basename:

out/
  DATA/
    MFC42.DLL
    MSVCRT.DLL
    ...
  manifest.json

For installer input, the extracted FILE resources are also kept:

out/
  n32d304/
    raw_file_resources/
    clean_file_resources/
  DATA.Z/
  SYSTEM.Z/
  ...
  manifest.json

Notes

• This currently targets the later Stirling/InstallShield archive family that identifies itself with strings like InstallShield Launcher SE v2.1 and InstallShieldSetup30.
• Verified samples so far include direct PE Netscape installers n32e201.exe, n32e202.exe, n32e30p.exe, and n32d304.exe; plus raw non-Netscape DATA.Z / _SETUP.LIB archives and numbered multipart DATA.1 / DATA.2 sets from Toshiba and Ricoh utility packages.
• The self-extracting installer path assumes a PE installer with standard resource tables and FILE resources.
• Older pre-Setup30 InstallShield launchers with strings like InstallSHIELD Launcher (C) The Stirling Group, 1990, 1991 and payloads such as INSTALL.EX$ / INSTALL.INS are not currently supported.
• No support for later CAB-based InstallShield installers, unrelated 16-bit installers, or outer wrapper formats such as ZIP/WinZip SFX or LHa SFX.
• Directory records in these archives are not fully reconstructed yet; extracted files are currently grouped by source archive.