i have an exe file. it's a small game about 300 MB. there are some WAV sounds that i want to extract. is there any way to open exe file without installing it?

That depends on what kind of .exe file it is. The main variations I know of are 16bit(dos) executables, 32bit (console and gui) windows executables and self extracting archives. There are probably other types I have no experience with(64bit exe's??) as well. If it is a self extracting archive then you *may* be able to extract it using a third party archive program to a directory without installing it. Sometimes there is a cabnet or other archive within the self extractor you would also need to extract. Even if it self extracting you may find the music may be in any number of formats, unreadable by most media players. You may be able to just view and extract the files with some archive programs. It would depend on the compression used. I'd say say 7-zip and tugzip are two programs worth a try and their both free.

thanks a lot