What are cab files?

Question

What are Cab files? What do they do? Where are they found?
Windows 2000

Answer 1

From Modem help.com

Cabinet files are a compressed collections of files - a little like zip files, though these have .CAB filetypes.

These are the files from which the Windows operating system was originally built.

Windows keeps a record of the location of the drive and folder of these files so that, if any part of the system files are installed or re-installed, it knows where to find them. Experience suggests that this record can often be wrong, however, & extracting a fresh file can sometimes be a tad difficult.

The operating system was originally loaded either:

* direct from Windows floppy discs (rare)
* direct from a Windows CD
* from CAB files stored on a hard-disc
* across a network connection

These days the CAB's are often on the hard disc. These is convenient, as the Windows system CD does not need to be put in the CDROM every time a portion of Windows is re-installed. The downside is that it leaves these files open to software corruption.

To discover where they are:

use Windows Find & enter "*.cab" (no quotes) in the Named: box
choose the Find Now button

If the Cabinet files are on disc there should be 20 or more files with Windows-like names all in the same directory (often Options\Cabs). If not, put the Windows CD in the CDROM & try again.

Registry location:

within the SourcePath Key at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Software
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Setup

Answer 2

CAB files are usually compressed files used to install Microsoft programs (particularly Windows). A windows installation disk will have lots of CAB files that are decompressed and copied to your PC.

Answer 3

they are 'cabinet' files, used to store data info. i believe it is also executable. it is also a sort of a 'zip' file

some of the directories it can be found:
c:\winnt\softwaredistribution