If you are a Windows user, you might come across the .msu files at least once. If not, the Windows Update packages have a .msu file extension. The .msu file name extension is associated with the Windows Update Standalone Installer which has all the supporting files. It contains one or more updates for applications and files on the Windows system. MSU files are installed by the Windows Update Stand-alone Installer (Wusa.exe), which is run by Windows Update automatically. According to Microsoft, An .msu file contains Windows Update metadata, one or more .cab files, a .xml file and a properties file.
You can extract the .msu files manually to see what are all the files included in it and We can do it without any additional software or tools. Yes, we can extract the file using the Windows built-in command prompt tool itself.
How To Extract .msu Files using Command Prompt:
Step 1: Open Command Prompt.
Step 2: Now type the below command with your source and destination paths as shown in the below screenshot.
Expand -F:* Source Destination
Source: Complete path of the .msu file
Destination: Path where you want to extract
Example: 
Step 3: Once hit enter, Microsoft File Expansion Utility starts to extract the contents of the file and it will complete in few seconds based on the size of the .msu file size.
Step 4: Once the process completed. You can see the extracted files in the destination path.
If you are unable to locate any .msu files in your PC but want to try this guide, then download any sample from the Microsoft Update Catalog website and try it. Feel free to share your doubts/clarifications via comments.
