Can I regain my program installation files from cabinet files?

Check the contents of the cab file using a compression program (ex. 7zip). I’ve used Recuva and it’s worked well for me, but I haven’t needed to recover exe files before. It’s possible that Recuva packs them into cab files and you can extract the exe. It’s also possible that the files couldn’t be recovered and the cabs are just Recuva’s best attempt and are actually corrupt.

Thanks for the quick response!

Hopefully it ends up being that simple, though I rather hope there’s a different answer. I think Recuva gave me hundreds of cab files to go through :/
I had a LOT of information on that HD

I’ll be sure to let you know how it works out!

What operating system are you on? If it’s a Linux distribution, you can install the application cabextract, put all your .cab files in the same folder, and then in a terminal window something like:

cd <folder that contains the .cab files>

cabextract ./*.cab

Though it might be that the last command should be:

cabextract -F *.cab

(I don’t have .cab files so I can’t test it.)

That should extract all of them. Heck, I believe you can even install it on Windows and Mac OS X, but if so, you’re on your own as to how it works ;-)

He said he used Recuva which is a Windows only program, so I think we can assume he’s using Windows. Hope he’s had success.

Yeah, I’m running Windows. I’ve gone through and checked out the contents of the cab files, but as far as I can tell my missing exe files are not there. It may be that all the random files I found in there are the extracted contents of the exe files, but I sure hope not, since there’s no way I’ll be able to piece all those together.

I think either Recuva didn’t properly recover my what I’m looking for or they’re just hidden somewhere else I haven’t looked yet (the hundreds of compressed folders, perhaps).

Thanks for the advice, but I think now it’s just a matter of search and hopefully rescue.

Hmm, just two days ago I used the Photorec application to succesfully restore the contents of a corrupted SD card (don’t let the name fool you, it does more than photos). Note sure if it’s suitable for you, but I thought I’d share the link anyway so you can check out yourself whether it’s useful for recovering your stuff.