I've been told that .msi files are really just some form of compiled script with a packaged .cab file, and possibly some sort of database.

I have an .msi I'm generating with high level tools and I'd like to crack it open and see what low level tasks it actually does.

Any software/tools sugesstions?

Actually I use total commander, and completely agree. Does this plugin have a name or a webpage where I can get it?

Cool, Thanks! I didn't realize it was actually named "MSI" I figured it had a specific name that would be hard to find without knowing it.

This gets my foot in the door, I can now crack open an msi and see all the binary files, still most of them are not in human readable formats though, it'd be nice if there was some sort of decompiler or something that would just show me a high level list of tasks that the .msi file was doing during install.

I would love to use ORCA (you are not the first to suggest I use it), if I could find the download link. After reading the comments on all the linked pages, I'm apparently not the only one who can't find it (though some people posted the "new" url, those are broken links too. Very lame.)

Right, I installed that. The one for windows 7, that says it comes with version 5 of ORCA. Still not there. Nothing in the start menu containing the word "ORCA", and no "orca*.exe" on my hard drive -- anywhere.