You should able to take the files out and mount them in the new version.

Out of an installation program? Mount them?

Then install dosbox, copy the installed files, uninstall dosbox. Yes you might be allergic to installing stuff you don't want, but that's not taking long

This has been discussed before IIRC. The DOSBox devs are reluctant to provide a ZIP package for some reason. For the record, I'd like to have a ZIP package, too (; .

Anyway, there's an easy solution: you can unpack the NSIS installer with 7-zip. More convenient than installing/uninstalling.

PS: I think the aversion to using installers stems from prehistoric Win9x times, where many (nearly all, in my experience) uninstallers were crap and didn't remove all components, or removed more components than they should. It's a lot better with modern Windows versions, but I'm still using non-installer packages whenever I can. I even install games in a VM and copy them to my "main" OS afterwards where possible. Old habits die hard I guess.

No, see, all I want to do is update the files in a /DOSBOX folder inside a game's main directory. Anyway, I did what I wanted to do by copying and pasting from the /DOSBOX folder inside the program folder for the D-Fend frontend program.

As addict said, just use 7Zip. It can treat the installer as a zip.

You could also get DBGL which comes in zip form which has DOSBox bundled with it 😁

Installer is LZMA, so just having 7zip is the thing. Rightclick the installer > 7-zip > open with 7-zip (top-most), then just drag DOSbox.exe and both SDL libs into the needed folder, then confirm replacement.