Win9x Portable Application ToolKit

[awkduck]

Years ago, I had a handful of ToolKits for making portable apps. As life has progressed, those tools have been lost. Back then I didn't use them much anyway.

These days, I often run Win9x from a disk image loaded to ram. But I install programs elsewhere. I can save my settings to the "Live Disk Image" using a couple of different techniques. This saves, the sometimes needed, registry settings. But it is much more practical to create a portable application. In fact, a Live environment is great for that.

Right now, I use a bunch of individual tools and notes; collected from various places. It works fine, since I can fine tune each application to it's needs (very hands on). But I was just curious if anyone still had some "Old School" portable application tool kits.

This is low urgency. But high curiosity. For the record, this is for personal use and not for the distribution of copyright protected software. In the configuration above, portable applications are obviously a practical solution. In point of fact, this configuration maintains a very clean system registry.

[Nerdulater]

1 hour ago, awkduck said:

Years ago, I had a handful of ToolKits for making portable apps. As life has progressed, those tools have been lost. Back then I didn't use them much anyway.

Never heard of this program. Was this from a 3rd party or from Microsoft?

[awkduck]

There was more then one project. Most of them came together as forum projects. Eventually, a few had their own websites. But those are long gone. I can't remember any of their names. There is still "portableapps". They ended Win9x support in 2010. But their tools don't really seem to support the creation of portable applications. They just provide a uniform system for deploying them. I would still do all the things I already do, but just format my package/launcher to their specifications. That isn't very important to me, as of yet.

Most of the toolkits were just scripted GUIs, doing what I manually do now. Some were far better then others.

There was one that gave you the option to have your registry and changed (portable) files in a hidden folder; named after and located in the same directory as your launcher. But it also provided an option to temporarily load the same data, but then store changes back inside of the launcher file. In both cases the portable application was just one file. There are advantages to both ways.

That is how I build them. But it adds some steps in the creation process.

Other toolkits often output "portable applications environments" working out of a folder. The main advantage of this method, was that you could view the files like you would in the "Program Files" directory. Also you can overview the portable registry files. It was easier to convert this kind into an actual installed application, if you wished to do so (batch file).

[awkduck]

There is a very basic program called "Portable Application Creator". I don't know if it ever worked with Win9x.

Also "Portable Application Launcher".

Interestingly, similar to portable applications is application virtualization, like "Thinstall" (the pre 3 versions supported Win9x).