20 October 2011

How to Make Portable Software With Winrar

Published at | 10/20/2011 Categories: ,


These days, Portable Applications are very popular among the users. On systems that are limited and there is no possibility to install the program, using the portable version of applications can run without having to install them. Portable applications can also be saved to a flash drive and you run the program without installing them directly. There are so many ways that we can get a portable program. They can be downloaded directly from the internet or using software like Thinstall to make an application portable. But this trick is about how we make portable applications using Winrar. Majority use Winrar as a compression software but it can also be used for making portable software.

Note: This trick only works if the desired software that we plan to make it portable, installs all its files in a same folder. Some program copy some of their files like ocx and dll in other files or directories like Windows/System32 and we cannot make such programs portable with Winrar. Now follow these steps:
 
1. Go to the program’s installation directory that you want it to make it portable (usually a folder in Program Files).

2. Right click on empty space and choose select all or press Ctrl+A on the keyboard.

3. After selecting all files and folders, right click on a file and select Add to Archive.




4. In Winrar window, in the General tab, select Create SFX Archive.




5. Now go to the File tab and select the whole text in Files to add (Ctrl+A) and copy (Ctrl+C) the route.




6. In Advance tab click on SFX options.




7. In the new opened window and inside the General tab, choose Create in current folder. After that you have to enter the program’s executable file name with the file extension (usually exe) in Run after extraction text box. The name you write in this section must be the same as the program. For example if the program’s executable file name is ‘YahooMessenger.exe’, then you have to write the exact same name (YhooMessenger.exe) in this section.




8. In the same window, go to Advance tab and then Delete>Files to delete in the destination folder, press Ctrl+V to paste the route that you copied earlier in step 5.




9. Go to Modes tab and select Unpack to temporary folder and Hide all together.

10. In older versions of Winrar enter the Update tab and click Overview all files to select it. In newer versions this option available in the Modes tab under Overwrite mode. 




11. Now in Text and Icon tab, select Brows in front of Load SFX icon from the file, to choose a proper icon for your portable application with extension .ico from your hard disk. If you don’t have any icon on your computer, just Google search free icon and download your desired icon from the internet.




12. Finally OK all windows and exit from the Winrar. In the same installed folder of the application, a new file will be created. This file is the portable file of your application. You can copy this file anywhere you want, like a flash drive and execute the program simply with double click on it.




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