non-installed applications can run?

after a long odyssey of wrong installations, damaged installations, problematic partitioning and merging, and formatting and re-formatting, I finally have my OS up and running, and I have installed some of the applications I use the most.

In one of the data partitions I have as backup, I found the backup for the "program files" folder which was probably put there by the people at the technical center before I went through that long odyssey I just mentioned. Funny thing is, if I click on the executable files, many of those applications run, although they have never been installed in my current OS and don't show up in the install/unistall software dialog box. How is this possible?

Before I noticed that they could run, however, I had deleted many of them, assuming they would be just plain old non-running files with no link to the registry. I hope I haven't done any harm by not having un-installed them?

 

Thats actually fairly normal, what you have is whats often refered to as a portable app. Many applications install the most important stuff to the main directory and some minor information to the registry and sometimes some special dll or driver files in system32. The only thing really missing then is the shortcuts in the start menu. If you click on the executable manually as you have done, it bypasses the need for a shortcut start link.

Some apps though will not run without their registry entries or system32 files, for these it takes a little more work to turn it into a portable app. Really this is all the first portable apps were, just copied directories.

I install my games on my D drive and when I reformat my C drive I would go to reinstall the games and find when I pointed them to D, 80% of the games would see their files and just create shortcuts and registry entries for them, installing in less than a minute, some with just the first disk of a five disk set. The other 20% insisted on a total reinstall. This last time when I formated C to install XP SP3 from scratch, for some reason I started clicking game exe's on D to see which would run. Up to this point I have sent 12 or so shortcuts to the desktop for the first 12 out of mabey 60 games on D and all of them play with no reinstall. They all have nocd fixes so that may be why, but I see no reason to reinstall the things unless I hit one that will not run from the nocd exe, and 12 is enough for now.

I have also done this with other applications, installing temporarily, copying the directory to a folder I created (C > Program Files > 0NoInstall > Folder Name)[the 0 makes the noinstall folder always appear at the top of program files]. Then I uninstall the program and use the copied directory to run it like a portable app. Once I enter my registration information for the apps, it seems to carry over even when they are uninstalled.

Then there are applications that are already portable in nature like Aida32, GSpot and Virtual Dub. These apps are already ,unzip to a folder and create your own shortcut, ready, so they also go into 0Noinstall. That way I don't panic later when its time to uninstall and I can't find one, or I can save the whole folder to another drive when I format C and just copy it back when I'm done reinstalling XP.

I would venture to guess that a good 70% of apps will run this way.

 

excellent! thanks! So I'll just move those directories, in full, to the C:\program files folder... phew! this will save me a lot of work!

 

Sure, test them out first of course. And here's a little tip for you, you can make your own start menu folders for the programs (I have some generic folders to keep things from getting too tall like Utilities - Security - Internet - Burn&Play - Graphics and Games) by going into Documents and settings > All Users > Programs and making folders for them (for me within the generic ones). Then from the programs directory after you copy it over, right click its exe file and "send to desktop" create shortcut. Once on the desktop click it and drag to the start button and work your way to the folder you made and drop it in there. thats right, you can drag and drop stuff from the desktop into the start menu. once there I usually delete the shortcut on the desktop to keep it clean. Watch you don't drop it in the wrong place though.

 

yeah, thanks that much I knew... but here's another question. with the new XP install, I've quickly installed a bunch of basic programs, just to get going, because I have a few reports that are due tomorrow and couldn't wait to do it all slowly. This means that I installed everything to the default installation folder that the installer programs suggested.

My "program files" folder is now a mess! rolleyes What are people's experiences with Application Mover? I was planning on organizing stuff a bit as soon as I get some time... Is it worthwhile, though? What are the advantages of having the program files folder organized like I usually have it (e.g. "video apps", "graphics apps", "Misc IMs", etc.). Am I just being an tidiness freak?

Of course, before playing around, I would burn a bootable cd with an acronis backup of the current state of things...