Installation v.s. Standalone question.
 

ok i have a question and i dont know exactly if you guys can help but here i go. what is the difference between a installation and standalone .exe? now i know why some programs need to be installed but most seam to not, is there any way to convert a installation program to a standalone .exe. i mean nothing crazy like photoshop because that would be illegal and a huge file, but something small like firefox w/o add-ons seams imposable to do. any imput would be nice.

Re: Installation v.s. Standalone question.
 

Yes it is possible to do this providing that they don't need registry entries etc, thats one reason for installations is to set up registry entries for the applications as well as giving them paths so that it is all set up ready for the user to just go start > aProgram.

Chris

Re: Installation v.s. Standalone question.
 

better insight, thanks I wasent thinking registry wize. my next question would be can you include a programs original .exe and extra files making a standalone version. without opening up the original exe or creating new code. my ambition woud be overall to make a converter that converts the files in program files to one file. I'm sorry this might not make sence or be possable I'm new at this and I am a program files neet freak.

Re: Installation v.s. Standalone question.
 

It's possible for a program to be a single file, but it's really inefficient. The reason programs are split up into libraries and other files are so that you don't have to load a single several-hundred MB file into memory each time you load the program. So there's tricks, like keeping resources (whether text strings or images) in separate files so you can load or unload them as needed. Sometimes parts of the programs are split into libraries, so they only need be loaded when the program requires that code. Other libraries can be shared between programs, so by installing one copy of it, several programs can rely on the same file.

To answer your question, there isn't (AFAIK) a way to recreate a program as a standalone. Even if there was, your system would quickly feel the brunt of it.

Re: Installation v.s. Standalone question.
 

Well I think it's also necessary to consider what standalone might mean. Like Jimbo said it's important to realize that if you made just one file (that being JUST the executable) it would hog all your resources. However, stand alone programs are available: HydraIRC, uTorrent, etc. These are programs you can download and simply unzip retaining their internal working structure. However, there's no change to your system nor install/uninstall, etc. Simply unzip, and delete if you don't need.