[nietsloh]

How do I run a program from a USB key? The program wasn't designed to be run this way -- it was designed to be installed on a hard drive running Windows.

Any tips?

[happyrck]

these are the programs that you can run from the thumb drive

http://www.u3.com/

[nietsloh]

Thanks. I'm familiar with the U3 standard, but the program I want to run isn't compatible.

Perhaps there's a program out there which fools an installing program into thinking everything's going "normally" when, in reality, it's being placed on a USB key?

[happyrck]

I played around with doing what you want to do...I could load sybot search and destroy on the thumb drive and it would work as long as I used it on the computer I installed it on...not on another computer that I wanted to use it on...the programs when installed that aren't U3 compliant put entries in the registry and need those to run....if you do run across a solution please let me know as I would be very interested....the U3 site says there are alot of programs that are being recoded to work on thumb drives good luck

[brendandonhu]

Here's a few: http://portableapps.com/

[happyrck]

and heres more

http://software.u3.com/

if you find such a program/trick let me know as I'm very interested to do what you are trying to do

[nietsloh]

Yes, more and more programs are able to run from USB, and the U3 site is helpful -- but not what I need. I have a program that's not supported for USB. Thanks.

[StumpedTechy]

If the program doesn't support it its not going to work. Alot of programs have registry hooks and other major system links that if you try and use it it just will not function. This is why it requires the application makers to be the ones to work on making the application portable.

Sorry

[kiwiguy]

Perhaps if we knew what the program was?

If its DOS based its not going to work, as DOS has no USB support.

If it is a Windows program that uses the Registry in the normal manner its not going to work either, as explained above. There is no "work around" for a program that is reliant on the host registry for it's operation, Windows will not know where its resident or where its library (dll) files are.

[StumpedTechy]

Actually DOS does have some USB support.

Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage

I can't get it to work 100% of the time but it works about 75% of the time.

I really think this is a windows based question though based on some of the responses earlier.

[lister]

Even if you did get it installed on the usb key, chances are you would have to add some entries to the registry of the target PC before you could run it - then you would have to have permission for it.
Yet again though, this all depends on the software - and the license as well!

[Ms. Dos]

Originally Posted by nietsloh

How do I run a program from a USB key? The program wasn't designed to be run this way -- it was designed to be installed on a hard drive running Windows.

Any tips?

Haven't had time to play with this (only found it a couple of days ago) but it might serve the purpose at hand (run programs on machines that they haven't been installed on):
http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/moveit11.html
Would appreciate it if someone gets to use it, if they'd let us all know how they fared. Brief description follows:
Having a lot of programs on your hard drive is a usual thing today, but someday such users certainly will face such problem as moving registered program from one place to another. It is a problem, because almost every program stores some data into registry (such as used file paths, for example), and you can't just move program folder from where it is to another location, because in 90% cases application will not run correctly anymore.
So was before. Today MoveIT! will help you to solve this problem.

(Freeware. Compatible w/all WinDoze versions)

[Eriksrocks]

I'm curious as to why this is in the Vista forum... Oh well.

Unfortunately, as everyone said before, it needs to be U3 compatible - or it can't modify or rely on the registry. You would be better off just putting the installer on the thumb drive and then installing it (and uninstalling it) on every computer.

[mrford]

I have found that if you install win98se on a usb drive then you can sometimes run app on another winxp machine.
I do this at the local college public computer lab, they don't allow installing of apps but on my drive i can run them. like cuteftp and some download managers.

[Ms. Dos]

Actually, while having U3 is nice it's not always necessary. Depending on the application/program in question you may be able to find a "portable" version of it (such as FireFox, Thunderbird, a variety of AntiVirus packages, etc. etc. One site that's a good source is: portableapps.com There are a bunch of others. I'd start with either a Google search on "portable apps for thumb drives" and/or a combination of the app in question and the word "portable" (example: "cuteftp portable" -- drop the " marks).

Also, if you look into Bart's PE and track down what's called "plugins" they're actually stripped down instructions that allow something like--say Symantec's "Ghost" or PowerQuest's "Partition Magic" from a thumb drive by having the bare bones, necessary files available to the PE.