Windows Phone Thoughts: What Is a Cabinet (.cab) File?

"You may have noticed that people (including me) often write about installing software for Windows Mobile smartphones from a CAB file. So, what exactly is a CAB file? CAB is shorthand for Cabinet. CAB files are compressed files that can contain multiple files or even multiple folders with multiple files. You can find its official description on Microsoft TechNet (see below)."

If you're like me you might find articles like this interesting. Personally I love to tinker with things and figure out how they work. In a nutshell though, a Windows Mobile cabinet file is a compressed archive, like a Zip file, which contains an XML file that tells the operating system where to put all the items within and which registry keys to create and/or edit. Cabinet files are relatively simple to create as long as you have the right tools and can be used to do some really handy stuff. For instance I had a CAB file that I created for the sole purpose of restoring all of my registry hacks after a hard reset or ROM upgrade. This saved a ton of time for me since I usually ended up hard resetting my device once every few weeks to get rid of all the junk that was left over from the software I installed and uninstalled during that time.