Mini Compressor AIO 2021

[madoxs]

Originally Posted by Carldric Clement

This has just updated the script from @pratikpatel8982, who made the Installer Plugin for Mini Compressor. Feel free to use it if it works.

List:
- WPI Original (working)
- CorePack UI Final Build 2.0.0.0 (working)
- Windows Phone Installer (bug-free) (working)
- Black Box (working)

How To Use A plugin
am i can use its by Your Program or By inno setup & Plugin will work as well with any Compress File i do it with your program,sir?

[Carldric Clement]

Originally Posted by madoxs

How To Use A plugin
Can I use its by Your Program or By in Inno Setup & Plugin will work as well with any Compress File i do with your program, sir?

Since you've asked, it only works with Mini Compressor. Somehow it works with other compressors, but somehow it doesn't work between the method Freearc.

[Carldric Clement]

Coming soon for updates Mini Compressor on Github

[Registered55]

Hello, I’ve been using Mini Compressor for a while and overall the compression works great, but I’m having trouble with the self‑extracting (SFX) part.

When I create smaller archives (around 3GB or below), the SFX EXE works normally. It shows the UAC shield icon, Windows recognises it as a valid executable, and it runs without any issues.

However, once the output archive gets larger (somewhere above ~4GB — I don’t know the exact cutoff), the generated SFX becomes invalid. Windows refuses to run it and shows the message “this app can’t run on your PC”. The file also loses the UAC icon, as if the PE header or overlay is broken. The compression itself completes fine — only the final SFX EXE becomes unusable at larger sizes.

I’m not sure if this is a size limitation, a stub limitation, or something in the way the SFX is built.

My second question is more important:
Do I actually need the SFX at all?

If there is a way to extract the ARC file directly — even if it uses Mini Compressor’s extended/“masked” compression chain (LOLZ, SREP64, XTool, Dispack, etc.) — I would prefer that. I don’t mind using command‑line tools or external extractors. I just need a reliable way to unpack the archive without relying on the SFX stub, especially since the stub seems to break at larger sizes.

So my questions are:

Has anyone else seen the SFX EXE become invalid once the archive exceeds a certain size?

Is there a known size limit or PE overlay limit for the Mini Compressor SFX stub?

Is there any tool or method to extract Mini Compressor ARC files directly, without needing the SFX EXE?

If not, is there a patched version of FreeArc or another extractor that supports the extended codecs Mini Compressor uses?

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

[kj911]

SFX and 4GB: This is technically limited, Windows cannot run executable files larger than 4GB. Regardless of whether Windows itself or our EXE file is 32 or 64 bit. I already ran into these limitations when repackaging BMS about 14 years ago. The only way I could overcome this was to get an archive under 4GB in size, thanks to the size of the given ARC archive, a well-chosen set of files and a compression algorithm.

There is only one way to get around this, although I don't know if the SFX stub in Mini Compressor is capable of unpacking the external *.arc archive, if it is next to our SFX file and the file names are the same.

For example, let's rename the classic "freearc-installer.sfx", for example "setup1.exe":

Works:
setup1.exe
setup1.arc

Failed:
setup1.exe
data1.arc

setup1.exe
data\setup1.arc

It may also accept other extensions, the SFX stub.

If the masked compression chain of the given archive is known, you can still get around the problem by creating an installer manually, in CMD or INNOSetup (possibly NSIS). Just make sure you have all the unpacking EXE/DLL files and well-configured cls/arc.ini files. Oh, and what's more important, LOLZ only runs with elevated/administrator rights from the command line under Vista/Win7+, otherwise you'll get CLS error messages. (Under XP, there is usually no such problem. INNO circumvents this by running child processes with elevated/admin rights.)

[Registered55]

Thanks for the breakdown on the 4GB limit and how the SFX stubs handle external archives—that makes complete sense why keeping them separate (setup1.exe + setup1.arc) is the way to go.

To tackle the lack of a native batch mode in the GUI, I’ve been experimenting with a completely hands-off automated approach using a custom PowerShell script. Since I'm aiming for a fully automated pipeline, my script handles things end-to-end: it scans a source directory, groups multi-region variants together so SREP deduplication can process shared assets across builds, dynamically compiles the complex masked compression command string into a temporary batch file, executes FreeArc, and finally triggers Inno Setup to build the companion installer stub right next to the .arc archive.

To be clear, I'm not looking to build any fancy installers or complex setup menus. I literally just want a reliable way to unpack and extract the archive whenever I need it later. From what I understand, because of Mini Compressor's advanced masked compression chain, extraction must be driven through some kind of compiled executable wrapper and cannot be done via a standard right-click "extract here" tool. Is that correct?

While most of my projects have processed and extracted smoothly using this method, I’ve hit one snag on a larger build (an 18GB source ISO compressed down to 13.8GB). This file consistently errors out when extracting at 90.60% every single time at the exact same spot.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what might cause an archive to choke right near the very end like that? Could it be a memory/dictionary allocation limit during extraction, or something that happened during the compression pass? Any advice would be huge!

I'm now in the process of compressing again, this time with a very slight change in the command chain.

the command below is what my script passes over to fa.bat and is from the first run that caused an error with one output project (the other 14 tests are all okay). The second command below is the new tweaked command chain, as maybe the first one was too aggressive perhaps.

@echo off
title Mini Compressor - Compressing...
"..\Compression\FreeArc\Arc.exe" a -ma9 -ds -di -i1 -ep1 -ed -r -s; -w_Temp\ -lc10240 -ld10240 -mxprecomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack070+lolz:dtb1:d192m:mtt1:mt4:mc1023/`$bitmapz=msc+grzip:128mb:m2:l2048:h15:a:t1/`$bink=bpk+srep:m3f:a1:mem1024mb+tor:7/`$void=srep:m3f:a2:mem1024mb+tor:7/`$photo=lepton/`$ogg=oggre/`$wavz=halac/`$mp3=mpz/`$pngz=precomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack070+lzma2:d128m:mt2 "$OutputPath" "$SourcePath"
exit /b %errorlevel%
"@

@echo off
title Mini Compressor - Compressing...
"..\Compression\FreeArc\Arc.exe" a -ma9 -ds -di -i1 -ep1 -ed -r -s; -w_Temp\ -lc4096 -ld4096 -mxprecomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack+lolz:d128m:mt2:mc1023/`$bitmapz=msc+grzip:128mb:m2:l2048:h15:a:t1/`$bink=bpk+srep:m3f:a1:mem512mb+tor:7/`$void=srep:m3f:a2:mem512mb+tor:7/`$photo=lepton/`$ogg=oggre/`$wavz=halac/`$mp3=mpz/`$pngz=precomp+srep:m3f:a2+dispack+lzma2:d64m:mt2 "$OutputPath" "$SourcePath"
exit /b %errorlevel%
"@

[kj911]

I would suspect HALAC* at first, especially if you compress the files in ABC order by extension. That is, the WAV files are right at the end of the unpacking. Why don't you use the MSC+TAK combination? For BMP, and maybe PNGs too, you should get better results with LOLZ instead of GRZip/others. (Without MSC/BMF.) Even if used alone.

My other suspect is the "dispack070", aka "exe2" filter. This is not compatible with DLZ, and may also fail when using other final compressors. (The process stops or crashes at a certain point.) For PNGs, it is completely unnecessary.

I have never used Lepton, I don't know how stable it is. OGGRE may also cause problems.

*This codec, insanely fast! Channels/bit depths supporting limited. (Version depends.)

[Carldric Clement]

Originally Posted by Registered55

Hello, I’ve been using Mini Compressor for a while and overall the compression works great, but I’m having trouble with the self‑extracting (SFX) part.

When I create smaller archives (around 3GB or below), the SFX EXE works normally. It shows the UAC shield icon, Windows recognises it as a valid executable, and it runs without any issues.

However, once the output archive gets larger (somewhere above ~4GB — I don’t know the exact cutoff), the generated SFX becomes invalid. Windows refuses to run it and shows the message “this app can’t run on your PC”. The file also loses the UAC icon, as if the PE header or overlay is broken. The compression itself completes fine — only the final SFX EXE becomes unusable at larger sizes.

I’m not sure if this is a size limitation, a stub limitation, or something in the way the SFX is built.

My second question is more important:
Do I actually need the SFX at all?

If there is a way to extract the ARC file directly — even if it uses Mini Compressor’s extended/“masked” compression chain (LOLZ, SREP64, XTool, Dispack, etc.) — I would prefer that. I don’t mind using command‑line tools or external extractors. I just need a reliable way to unpack the archive without relying on the SFX stub, especially since the stub seems to break at larger sizes.

So my questions are:

Has anyone else seen the SFX EXE become invalid once the archive exceeds a certain size?

Is there a known size limit or PE overlay limit for the Mini Compressor SFX stub?

Is there any tool or method to extract Mini Compressor ARC files directly, without needing the SFX EXE?

If not, is there a patched version of FreeArc or another extractor that supports the extended codecs Mini Compressor uses?

Any help or insight would be appreciated.

From my perspective, the SFX has a 4 GB size limit. You have to create your own MC.sfx manually. BUT, you can find the MC_SFX.exe in "Mini Compressor\Resources" folder there.

Before you open MC_SFX.exe, you have to edit the records.ini file first.

[Output]
Folder=your name game

[Record1]
Type=Freearc
Source={src}\Setup-1.arc
Output={app}
Disk=1
Password=yourpassword

And then open MC_SFX.exe; let it finish turning into MC.sfx. Once it finishes, you can find MC.sfx in the "Mini Compressor\Compression" folder. Just rename it from MC.sfx to Setup.exe or MC.exe

One more thing: after you finish making MC.sfx, edit the records.ini file and leave it empty.

[Output]
Folder=

[Record1]
Type=
Source=
Output=
Disk=
Password=