Hello trid users,
some days ago i migrate a friends's PC from Windows 7 to 10. Unfortunately
the HP printer does not work after that procedure. So first i look by the
useful NirSoft InstalledPackagesView tool at the list of files belonging to
the HP printer MSI package. There are listed files where main name consist
of a GUID and the extension is devicemetadata-ms. Because i do not know
nothing about such files i look also for such files on my own systems.
When i run TrID on hundreds of such files these are described by
ark-cab.trid.xml as "Microsoft Cabinet Archive" ( see appended
deb/output/trid-old.txt).
For comparison reason i also run other file identifying tools.
The droid tool { found at
http://droid.sourceforge.net/ } also recognize
such examples as "Windows Cabinet File" by PUID x-fmt/414 .
The newest file command version 5.38 {See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_(command)} describes inspected examples
also like "Microsoft Cabinet archive" ( see appended output/file-5.38.txt)
From output is visible that first cabinet member is a file with name
"PackageInfo.xml".
This can be verified by running 7z with list option ( see appended
output/7z-l.txt).
So i run tridscan to generate the trid definition
ark-cab-devicemetadata.trid.xml and start to refine that file
Because file type is of CAB-Format i add that mime type. This is shown by
additional line:
<Mime>application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed</Mime>
The used file name extension is expressed by line:
<Ext>DEVICEMETADATA-MS</Ext>
With the observed knowledge i searched for a web page concerning that file
format. On Microsoft server if found a page about Building Device Metadata
Packages. So i add that page as reference by XML-line like:
<RefURL>
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/building-device-metadata-packages
</RefURL>
So i removed some null patterns at higher offsets and also some accident null
values at low offsets.
<Ext>DEVICEMETADATA-MS</Ext>
In current trid definition there exist no reference. So i add Wikipedia page
about Debian package format. This is expressed by additional line:
<RefURL>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)</RefURL>
The essential XML files are now found in global string section by lines like
<String>PACKAGEINFO.XML</String>
<String>WINDOWSINFO.XML</String>
With the new trid definition file now all Device Metadata packages are
described more precisely ( see appended deb/output/trid-new.txt).
TrID definition, some examples and output are stored in archive
devicemetadata-ms.zip. I hope that the XML file can be used in future
version of triddefs.
With best wishes
Jörg Jenderek
