A brief history of Adobe Camera Raw
You can find a complete list of camera raw versions for Windows 32bit on this page:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=106&platform=Windows
V2.4 to 5.1 - contains a file format plugin (32bit and 64bit) call "Camera Raw.8bi" which is copied to the "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Plug-ins\File Formats" path.
v5.2 to 5.7 - contains the file format plugin (in 8bi format) and Adobe start to package in Camera Profiles (as .exe) as well. Installation of the Camera Profiles is simple as running the CameraProfiles.exe executable and it drops a whole bunch of files into "C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw"
V5.7 - This the last version of the Camera Raw software that has a very simple install interface.
V5.8 to current - The install procedure changed and you need to run a application called AdobePatchInstaller.exe which then extracts the files, renames them and put them in the correct location.
However you still want to install the files manually, as in my case, then keep reading.
Current Packaging Method
If you click on the payloads folder you will see
03/07/2012 11:22 PM <DIR> .
03/07/2012 11:22 PM <DIR> ..
03/07/2012 11:22 PM <DIR> AdobeCameraRaw6.0All-210510124504
03/07/2012 11:22 PM <DIR> AdobeCameraRaw6.0All-x64-210510130426
03/07/2012 11:22 PM <DIR> AdobeCameraRawProfile6.0All-210510124637
21/05/2010 01:05 PM 41,984 Media_db.db
21/05/2010 01:05 PM 170 Setup.xml
21/05/2010 12:45 PM 2,337 UpdateManifest.xml
3 File(s) 44,491 bytes
5 Dir(s) 65,437,519,872 bytes free
To extract the camera raw file format plug in do the following:
1) Click on AdobeCameraRaw6.0 folder (ie x64 if you want the 64bit version otherwise use the one without it)
2) Double click the Assets2_1.zip
3) look for a file called "1003" and extract this. More recent packages of camera raw have additional file which you can safely ignore.
4) rename this file to "Camera Raw.8bi" and install it to the location plugin folder for Photoshop.
You can then skip the camera profiles if you really want. To extract the camera profiles navigate to the AdobeCameraRawProfiles6 folder and open the Assets2_1.zip. This contains all the profiles but with a non standard name. The mapping between the cryptic vs real names is contained the file called Media_db.db (a standard SQlite database) in the table called "installfile".
The image above is captured using the sqlite-manager plugin for firefox.
The simple way to do things
1) Download and install v5.7 of Camera Raw and Camera Profiles
2) Download the most recent version of camera raw supported by your photoshop version and manually extract file 1003 and rename and install it over the previous one
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Update - 20/01/2014
I just got myself a new 64bit system with Win7 64bit. So I had to reinstall my Photoshop C5 as 64bit and the latest Camera Raw.
I clicked on the link above and downloaded and unziped "AdobeCameraRaw-7.1-mul-AdobeUpdate". From this file I extracted the "AdobeCameraRaw7.0All-x64-160512110605" folder which contained the file "Assets1_1.zip". Inside the Assets zip file I found a single file called 1002 (as per one of the commenter below). Then I renamed this file to "Camera Raw.8bi" and copied it to "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)\Plug-ins\File Formats".
For the 32bit version I extraced the "AdobeCameraRaw7.0All-160512104601" folder which contained the file "Assets1_1.zip". Inside the Assets zip file I found a single file called1003 which I renamed to "Camera Raw.8bi" and copied it to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Plug-ins\File Formats"
When I fired up Photoshop CS5 it complained that the version wasn't compatible! Going back to the original link I discovered that the last supported camera raw version for CS5 is 6.6 or - AdobeCameraRaw-6.6-mul-AdobeUpdate.zip. The process then was exactly the same and this time Photoshop CS5 didn't complain.
