Faux' blog

Google Earth "offline installer"

Google seem to be of the incorrect opion that you want your machine infected with Google Update.

The Google Earth download is actually just a cunningly disguised Google Update installer, and it seems to think it needs elevation.

It extracts %TEMP%\GUXXXXX.tmp\GoogleUpdate.exe, then tries to run:

GoogleUpdate.exe /install "appguid={74AF07D8-FB8F-4d51-8AC7-927721D56EBB}&appname=Google%20Earth&needsadmin=true" /installelevated

Instead of this,

GoogleUpdate.exe /install "appguid={74AF07D8-FB8F-4d51-8AC7-927721D56EBB}&appname=Google%20Earth"

..will happily download and extract Google Earth to %TEMP%\7ZipSfx.XXX. This is the unpacked offline installer, but the installer itself still attempts to elevate. Luckily, it's already unpacked, in:

%TEMP%\7ZipSfx.XXX\program files\Google\Google Earth

Just copy this folder to somewhere convenient and run googleearth.exe.

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For reference for other apps, the quoted argument to GoogleUpdate.exe is the last "line" in the downloaded GoogleEarthSetup.exe.