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.)