UI-less Self-Extracting EXE

The most common question regarding Chilkat self-extracting EXE’s is: How do I create a silent extractor that runs a “setup” program after extracting?

Answer:
Here is a sample command line that creates a silent self-extracting EXE:

ChilkatZipSE -u unlockCode -a -sm -sp -nowait -r setup.exe -exe a.exe a.zip

1. The “-r” option is used to specify the name of a setup program found within the .zip that is being converted to a self-extracting EXE.
2. The “-a” option is for creating a self-extracting EXE that will automatically extract to an automatically-chosen temp directory. If “-a” is used but “-r” is NOT USED, then the resulting EXE *will* display a dialog. The reason is that it makes no sense to extract to some unknown temp directory unless there is a setup program that can do something with the extracted files.
3. The “-sm” option is for creating a self-extracting EXE that suppresses the main dialog.
4. The “-sp” option is for creating a self-extracting EXE that suppresses the progress dialog.
5. The “-nowait” option allows the self-extracting process to exit before the setup.exe program completes.
6. The “-exe” option specifies the name of the self-extracting EXE to be created. If omitted, the EXE produced has the same name as the .zip but with a .exe extension.

Some Important Notes: If the embedded setup EXE does not run, try running the self-extracting EXE with a “-log” runtime option to see what happened. For example:

a.exe -log whatHappened.log