

The installer can also register extra components in the system to enable additional functionality in the application, which cannot be done in a portable application, and which is the main advantage of installers. Before the application can be launched, it requires an installation process, during which the installer places the application into a specific folder (usually Program Files), creates shortcuts, places configuration settings into the system user profile, and adds an uninstaller.

Installer is an application packaged into an installation program.To remove portable software from your computer, you simply need to exit the application and delete its folder. If you copy the configuration files together with the executable file to another location or media, all your settings will be carried across too. Portable software creates configuration files in its folder and usually doesn't change anything in the system. It can be placed in a folder on your computer, a USB flash drive, or any other removable media, and launched from there straight away. Portable application is a standalone executable file.When you install the platform, choose New Install.Some of our software products are offered in two editions: portable and installer. This gives you a nice little portable apps start menu and an easy way to manage updates. First, download the Portable Apps Platform. So here is how to install portable apps to the hard drive. If you install the portable version of VLC, you don't get that feature (although you can still manually set the file associations to do this). If ,for example, you were to install the regular version of VLC player, it will write to the windows registry and associate itself with video files so that you can play a video file in VLC by simply double clicking on the video file. But the one caveat is that because they don't write to the windows registry, they don't integrate with windows. You can install them to your hard drive and use them like any other program. If you want to uninstall the program, you simply delete the folder on the drive.īut you don't have to install portable apps to a USB flash drive. The installation program simply copies the program, and its associated files, to a folder on the drive without making any changes to the windows registry. Portable apps are designed to be installed to a USB flash drive, that you can move from machine to machine. Okay, maybe that's not a secret, but here is a workaround. Eventually, you have to reinstall windows and reinstall your programs to get the speed back. When you uninstall a program, it usually leaves some data behind in the database. The more data you write to the database, the longer it takes to do database lookups.

When you install a program, it writes data to the windows registry. The dirty little secret about windows is that the more programs you install, the slower it runs.
