InstallShield Z

File Format
Name	InstallShield Z
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving InstallShield Z
Extension(s)	.z

InstallShield Z format is a compressed archive format used by version 3 of the InstallShield installation software. Documentation is lacking but it has been sufficiently decoded by several open source projects.

It uses the proprietary "implode" compression algorithm by PKware.

Identification

Files begin with bytes 13 5D 65 8C 3A 01 02 00.

See also

• InstallShield CAB (successor format)
• InstallShield installer archive

Software

• Universal Extractor
• InstallShield File Compressor: Official compressor/decompressor utility (Windows command-line). Several different versions of it can be found on the internet (as icomp.zip, icompx.zip, icomp95.zip, ...). Included with Universal Extractor.
• Open source InstallShield v3 extractor (C++)
• Open source InstallShield v3 extractor (Pascal & Assembly)

Sample files

• http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction24b/GOLF/ → *.Z
• http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction40/DEER/ → *.Z
• http://cd.textfiles.com/hotgames/KidsEMail/ → *.z