The whole story: I have created a fancy .NET program which has an installer created by the Visual Studio Installer (VSI). The VSI creates 2 files (setup.exe and MyProgramSetup.msi). I understand the reasons for both files being needed, however, I only want to distribute a SINGLE executable installer to users. I do not want them to see 2 files and have to choose between them.

In order to do this I have merged the 2 files into a self-extracting archive using IExpress (as seen in this answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/535966/merge-msi-and-exe). This works well, however, the self-extracting archive that gets created has an ugly icon and confusing file info (the File Description is "Win32 Cabinet Self-Extractor" with 43 black spaces after it).

I need to replace the icon with my custom one and change some of the file properties like "Description", "Company", etc. I would like to have this automatically done as a build step so having a program which is a command line/console utility would be great.

I've searched for a while now and can only find one program which does exactly what I want (ResourceTuner Console: http://www.heaventools.com/command-line_resource_editor.htm) but it costs an arm and a leg and my budget is $0.

Does anyone know a better way to achieve what I want, or know of a program which can replace an executable's resources without having to use a GUI?

By the way, I have also tried "SiComponents Resource Builder 3" which can't even open the executable, and "Julien Audo's ResEdit" which just crashes when I execute the command:

"resedit.exe -convert "Modified Resources.rc" "MyProgramSetup.exe"