7-ZIP SFX Maker

Latest version: 2.2 (08-09-2009)

This project is now Open Source

This is a tool for making Self Extracting EXE files from 7-ZIP files. This program uses the modified SFX module developed byOleg Scherbakov.

This program requires .NET Framework 2.0 or above to run. Version 3.5 or 3.5 SP1 is recommended.

Features

Change SFX icon.
Create shortcuts for current user or all users.
Create environment variables.
Run multiple programs one by one after extraction.
Delete SFX file after extraction (Self-delete)
Select overwrite mode for files.
Hide extraction progress.
Compress SFX stub with UPX to reduce size.
Enable/disable XP Visual style.
Set extraction path. Allow/deny users to change the path.
Extract to temporary folder for software setups.
Save/load settings.

Please do not email me with any feature requests for this particular program. Most of the features available in this program are due to the modifications made to the default 7-ZIP SFX module by Oleg Scherbakov. Please contact the author if you have any feature requests. If you are good in C++ you can download the source code for the original 7-ZIP SFX module and implement the features yourself (since the 7-zip project is open-source).

If you have any suggestions for the GUI then you are welcome to email me or leave a comment on my blog.

Screenshots

Main window

Important

This program uses Resource Hacker to change the SFX icon. There are some re-distribution restrictions with ResourceHacker so I can’t include it in this package. Download ResHack.zip from the following link, un-zip it and copy ResHacker.exe to the application folder.

http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip

Limitations

The Modified SFX Module used by this program does not support encrypted 7-zip archives. It is probably a bug, since the default SFX module used by the 7-zip program works for encryted archives also. This module is not being developed anymore, so nothing can be done to fix it.

Download Links

Download 7-ZIP SFX Maker v2.2 (500 kB)

Download 7-ZIP SFX Maker 2.2 Source Code (600KB)

Download Resource Hacker (514 kB)

Download .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

If you find this program useful and wish to contribute to its development, then please make a donation using the PayPal button below. Your donations will help keep this project running.

Disclaimer

This program is free for personal and commercial use and comes with absolutely no warranty. You use this program entirely at your own risk. You are allowed to redistribute this program as long as you don’t charge anything for it.

If you have any suggestions or if you wish to report any problems,
feel free to leave a comment on my blog or email me at the given address.

7-ZIP, UPX, ResourceHacker, the Modified SFX module and the Icons used in this program are copyright of their respective authors. This program is not associated with these projects in any way. These projects are copyrighted and licensed by their developers under various licenses. Please visit their respective websites for more information.

Make a Comment: ( 36 so far )

36 Responses to “7-ZIP SFX Maker”

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Finally a nice GUI for 7-zip SFX creation, thanks! I have one problem and one suggestion though.

Problem:
I would expect “Extract to temporary folder” to silently create a temporary folder, and then delete it afterwards. But it didn’t, it prompted for a folder name when running the SFX. A silent temporary option is needed!

Suggestion:
Your program currently only takes finished .7z archives as input. It would be very nice if you could integrate 7zip itself, so you could add any files and directly create a 7zip SFX in one step.

Cheesy
January 27, 2009

It will take a lot of time and effort to integrate 7-zip with this program. Besides, the standard 7zip program is very good for creating 7z files. I wont be able to create anything half as good. So I dont want to go for it. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

It’s prompting for the folder name because the Allow user to change extraction path option is still checked (even though it is disabled). I will fix it in the next version. For now, just uncheck the checkbox before selecting Extract to temporary folder

teejee2008
January 30, 2009

Hi, Thankyou for Making 7-ZIP SFX Maker.
Now i have a Sujjestion about integrating 7-zip & 7-ZIP SFX Maker there is a Open Source Program called S7Z-0.8.0-1.win32 which also depends on Dotnet Framework & it is Based on 7-zip so You can Easily Intregrate 7-ZIP SFX Maker & S7Z-0.8.0-1.win32 thus we will get a 7-zip
which could add any files and directly create a 7zip SFX in one step.

I will Wait for your Reply.

Link – http://code.google.com/p/k7z/

loin2kolpotoru
October 8, 2009

I’m making my own program for creating 7-zip files. After it is finished I’ll integrate it with the SFX Maker. The program is still under construction. It will take a few more weeks to finish it.

teejee2008
October 11, 2009

It looks just great! Will try it ASAP. Thank you so much for your work, teejee… I think this tool will make portable apps compression faster than any command-line option for all of us. Will give feedback soon.

FenyX
February 12, 2009

Hi teejee2008,
I commend you for this great tool! I normally use WinRar to make SFX because of the features it provides, but I’d rather switch to 7z due to the better compression. May I suggest the inclusion of 2 things WinRar provides and I always use:
1 is let the system retrieve the Program File folder (tipically this is localized). The system var %ProgramFiles% has this value but I don’t know if one can put it in your Maker when indicating the extraction folder.
2- It would be very nice to add a dialog window that welcome/inform the user of what the the package contains (like WinRar).
3- finally, the possibility to add a custom bmp image to personalize the setup would be another nice touch.

ennio
February 12, 2009

Hi teejee2008,
I am happy to find an evolution of that application. The choice of the 7zip format is excellent. I applause.
I’d like to make a suggestion : could it be possible to make translation in other languages ? My surounding is poor with english.

Stephane
March 3, 2009

[...] 7zip SFX Maker (freeware) [...]

marcoschuh.de » Creating self executing .exe archieves with 7ip
March 13, 2009

hi thanx bro… i appriciate

but i m having a problem with run after extraction..
i m extracting it to temp folder..
plz help me how to do it???

Harry
March 18, 2009

F-Z….7-zip = 6GB >> 7-ZIP >> 674MB …!!

fz
March 25, 2009

[...] [...]

Compression Software
April 6, 2009

@ennio

You can use %ProgramFiles% or any other other system variable in the extraction path.

Its not possible to add a welcome dialog or an image.

Most of the features available in this program are due to the modifications made to the default 7-ZIP SFX module by Oleg Scherbakov. It is not being developed anymore. Contact the author if you have any feature requests.

Homepage: http://7zsfx.solta.ru/en/

teejee2008
April 10, 2009

@Stephane

I will be adding support for other languages in the next version. The next version will be available by next month. Thanks for the suggestion.

teejee2008
April 10, 2009

First of all.
Thank you for GUI.
I’m add some comments for messages like “It is not being developed anymore”.
Module still developing, but too slowly, because i’m not have enough time for this project.
At this time 2 versions are ready:
1.2.5.1307 as “stable”
1.3.0.1307 as “beta”
For the moment only russian help and pages updated, but module always compiling in two languages and you can downaload it at http://7zsfx.info/ru/download.html

Encryption will be introduce in 1.4 branch.

teejee2008:
Please delete my email from you post. It’s in plain text and spam make difficult to read my inbox. My email already present on module’s homepage (but in encoded form)

And… Sorry for my bad english.

Oleg_Sch
April 17, 2009

I’m happy to know that the module is still being developed. Thank you for making this SFX module. It is very useful. I will be waiting for the 1.4 version.

I have removed your email from my post. Sorry about the spam.

teejee2008
April 22, 2009

Downloading SFX maker. Avast found this:

Sign of “Win32:Binder-BO [Tool]” has been found in “http://download91.mediafire.com/2dydhwvll9dg/ozjk3wmi4md/7-ZIP+SFX+Maker+v2.0.exe\7-ZIP SFX Maker\Resources\join.exe” file.

virus in download
May 14, 2009

This is the best 7zip sfx editor around. Keep up the good work!

Vissik
May 16, 2009

The join.exe file is completely harmless. The false alarm is caused due to UPX compression.
Many UPX-compressed files give false alarms with anti-virus software.
Unpack the file using UPX and scan it again using any antivirus. The scan results will be negative.

teejee2008
May 16, 2009

Wonderful application. However, I don’t see an uninstall option listed in the Windows control panel, start menu or Programs directory. Does one just delete the directory or am I missing something?

Elliot
May 20, 2009

This application doesn’t require installation. Just delete the folder.

teejee2008
May 21, 2009

Is there a file size limit that join.exe can handle? I tried to use it on a rather large 7-zip file, and it seems to crash join.exe each time. The file size is around 2.2 GB.

Kyle
June 2, 2009

Awesome job – makes 7-zip a usable format for me.

Would love to see multi-line edit box for the messages – had to hack through a lot of 7-zip files to realize I could use some newline characters to make a longer message.

Thanks again,
D.

Djs
June 11, 2009

Opps – seconds after posting I noticed it does not seem to work with password encrypted archives. It creates the sfx. The sfx runs the starting message and the exact folder, but then gives the error: “Non 7-Zip archive.” The only differences between this run and previous successful ones was the password encryption and turning off UPX compression. Also the password protected archive works fine in other unzip software.

Still a great product – would love to see password support.

Also wanted to mention that I used two products that did the 7-zip compression and sfx creation in one step – neither worked with my large file archives. Yours works fine – so kudos on the decision not to replicate the 7-zip capabilities!
D.

Djs
June 11, 2009

Hi,
Suggestion:
What about some simple command line parameters, so one could specify a settings file, and the sfx is generated from the command line, so that one could build the file right from VisualStudio.
Greetings,
Simon

Simon
July 9, 2009

Hi TeeJee,

maybe i’m doing something wrong but the options ‘Cancel prompt’ and ‘Extract path text’ and ‘Extract cancel text’ don’t seem to work. I expect the ‘Cancel prompt’ option to popup when I press cancel during the extraction and that the extract cancel text is the text in the window when you enter the destination folder. But maybe i’m wrong here…

aai
July 10, 2009

@Djs

I’ll add the multi-line edit box in next version. Password encrypted archives are not supported by the SFX module. Support may be added in the future.

@Simon

I’ll be adding some command-line options in next version.

@aai

Those options are not working. It sounds stupid but I forgot to write the code for those options! It will be fixed in next version. Sorry for the inconvenience.

teejee2008
July 13, 2009

What a neat program, just what I was looking for and it works great. Too bad it’s not part of the 7zip program.

Frank
August 4, 2009

Two suggestions:

1. 7-Zip has a plug-in system, so it would be great, if you could make a plug-in out of this program, so that it is directly integrated in 7-Zip.

2. A way to integrate images into the SFX window, like you can see here:
http://www.worthinstalling.com/uploaded_images/Winrar-SFX-small.jpg

And also a question: Is it possible to read out the installation path of a specific program in the registry to set the correct extraction path automatically?

Harry
August 8, 2009

@Harry
These suggestions apply to the SFX module, not to the GUI. Please contact the developer of the SFX module. You will find more information at the following link:

http://7zsfx.info/en/

teejee2008
August 10, 2009

First off, thank you for making this program. It has made creating SFX archives from 7-Zip files so much easier.

Next…

1. The “Extract to temporary folder” option still prompts the user for a directory if you forget to untick the “Allow user to change extraction path” box first.

2. The ‘Cancel Prompt’ option does nothing. I.e. If its ticked when you create the archive and then extract the archive and cancel half way through there is no prompt, it just cancels.

3. After creating a SFX archive the ‘Files’ box is blank and ‘Load Settings’ option does not remember the files that were previously selected

4. An option to leave (i.e. not delete) and view extracted files would be nice.

Thanks again

bob
September 3, 2009

I’d like to thank teejee for this tool, even though it’s only a GUI, it made my job possible at all. I tried 3 other 7z->exe tools to make a silent OpenOffice installer but I could not make it work.
Only your tool produced usable installers

@bob:
1. I’d say this is intended. You can leave the option to the user.
2. True, it does not work.
3. True, hurts if you’re not happy on the first try (and the second, and the third…)
4. This is what “Extract to specified folder” is. Extract to temp folder deletes files, specified does not. If you want files to stay in the temp folder by default, just tick “specified folder” option and put %temp% there.

manicalic
September 20, 2009

[...] Download 7-Zip Sfx Archive [...]

7Zip To Exe Converter
October 3, 2009

I am Vary Glad to Know that u are
making program for creating 7-zip files
and integrating it with 7-ZIP SFX Maker.
I will wait anciously for Downloading &
Trying that Program. All the Best to You.

loin2kolpotoru
October 12, 2009

Thank you for the ability of translating all. It works well but I have a little boring thing : each time I open the soft, I have to select the language. Is it possible to set it by default ?

Stephane
October 14, 2009

Both links go to the source code download. Is there compiled binaries???

Jimmy
November 5, 2009