Cabinet files are compressed archives of a set of files. Archives are files that contain other files. Typically the files in an archive are compressed. Archives usually have file names ending with CAB, ZIP, LZH, ARJ, or ARC, depending on how they were created. Archives make it easy to group files and make transporting and copying these files faster. Compressed archives also reduce the space required to store a set of files on a hard disk or floppy disk. Most of the Windows 95 files are stored in cabinet files. Other Microsoft applications are also distributed using cabinet archives. The default extension of cabinet files is CAB. Viewing or extracting individual files from the cabinet archives can be accomplished with the following two methods.
For more information see:
Viewing and Extracting from Cabinet Files (GUI)
Extracting Files from Cabinet Files (DOS)