I've been wondering how could people can make portable program out with just an exe? is it posssible? any program can be used to make portable program? Thnx!

You will need thinstall which license cost a few thousand US dollars. I experimented with the demo and while you can make programs portable with no technical knowledge, they either end up sluggish or buggy. It's a great program but some technical knowledge is needed to get the best out of it.

what the program is? is there any of them that are free? Thnx!

i think this mumeichan refering to http://www.thinstall.com/

Thinstall and it's too expensive price have already gone. VMWare has bought that company, and now it's called ThinApp and selling it at RM156.60 for client license (without VMWare Workstation) for 1 year support which is really cheap when compared to Thinstall offering at RM16,589.18.


if you've experimented with the demo, either you're a legit company that get access to the demo, which is real hard to get, or you just use the pirated version because Jonathan Clark never release a public demo for the rest of us until VMWare acquired teh company...


not really, if you're just ThinApp'ing simple applications, there's no need to worry about sluggish or buggy portables. If it's Microsoft Office or other complex suites of applications, I can't agree more...


can't agree more about that...


The program is called ThinApp. You won't get it for free, but there's a 60-day trial available at VMWare site or you can just visit the link below:


If you're facing problems or have some questions, you can either ask me, as I am an avid user of ThinApp (formerly Thinstall) or you can visit the official discussion forum at:


Not all applications can be portablized and some of them requires activation on each PC (which didn't really work with ThinApp). ThinApp also wont work with applications that uses kernel drivers, for example, your antivirus or defragmenter...

So, happy portablizing your apps!

You can make big complex programs portable with no technical knowledge by just following the 1-2-3 step instructions. I've managed to make Photoshop work with no problem, but loading time is slower. Same goes for the whole office suite. Loading time is slow but when it is loaded it runs smoothly like normal. However some software that interact with certain drivers don't seems to work. Half the programs that support touch screen input didn't recognize the touch screen in put on my computer. And well in the end I concluded I'd rather install the programs on my computer.

There are other ways to make programs portable which cost almost nothing, but you need to know programming to achieve that.

No it's not and since Adobe Photoshop is not complex, you can follow the 1-2-3 steps. If you're ThinApp'ing suite such as Adobe CS3 Premium/Master Collection, you'll know what I mean... There's certain things that need manual "tweaks" before you can get it right...


you should set the CompressionType to None as it will improves loading speed by a large margin, but you have to sacrifies the size of the output. Btw, in Photoshop, there's lots of files you can remove without affecting Photoshop's functionality and gain quite difference in loading speed. I've done on my Photoshop CS3, (and CS4 beta), and I get 1 second loading time (from the VirtualOS to app load that is)...

For any software that have lots of files (and components to load at runtime), better set no compression, if you need compression for EXE or DLL (and OCX), you can use UPX, give better compression ratio and more speed...


You can use AutoIT, it's an easy to learn scripting language without any prior programming knowledge...

some of the complex program..maybe need thinstall...but for simple program, just use extractor utility and winrar...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRPyq6IHr9o

Thnx for the info!

now downloading the Thinapp, eager to see it

i was getting idea after my former senior managed to make 1 portable program,

i was like, sugoi!

i remember he was using some compressing program for the program

it was upx or something

but thnx anyway!

you won't get portable using WinRAR or any SFX maker since portable means it doesn't touch system files and registry, so for example, if you have Adobe Photoshop installed, and run Adobe Photoshop portabled using WinRAR or SFX maker, your local Adobe Photoshop may get corrupted etc, so even if it's simple program, use ThinApp so you'll be sure all changes, files and/or registry will be stored in the sandbox and doesn't mess with system...

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Added on August 12, 2008, 9:04 am
be sure to install ThinApp on a clean install of Windows (ie. in virtual machine such as Microsoft Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation) or else, your portable might not work on other PC and capturing will take a hell lot of times...

Right now putting the thinapp at my VMWare.... lag my pc a bit

Thnx for the info!

I would recommend you to use Virtual PC as it is ligher on resources (both RAM and space), you won't need VMWare Workstation advanced feature just for few portablizing test, and do take notice that VMWare Workstation (with VMWare Tools installed) has some issues with some applications...

well thnx for the advice, but my lecturer prefer the VMWare since it was on our subject. Does it support the VMWare extension?

wow! your lecturer got VMWare Workstationlicense meh? yes it does support the VMWare Tools, but as VMWare Tools install some C++ runtime files, your built portables might not work on PC that doesn't already have the files installed (so you need to install the C++ runtime first). I didn't remember the runtime version, but some ppl have reported this problem at the VMWare discussion forum, and VMWare has advised ThinApp user to avoid installing VMWare Tools if you encountered the mentioned problem...

btw, what course you're taking? I'm not aware of any courses that make use of any os virtualization...

my lecture only have few VMWares around, others VMWare were p*****d, u know?.

I'm taking IT in Computer system and networking. The lecturer is teaching us Server Admin, He FORCE me to use the VMWare for OS virtualization and Server Virtualization and some programming function.

thnx about the runtime tool, I didn't install during VMWare installation.

wallau... FORCE ah? and one more thing about the VMware Tools. If you didn't install it, you'll lose support for drag-and-drop between host and guest. So the way you can install ThinApp is through internet download or by networking the guest to your local network... good luck with your training then, if you got any more questions about ThinApp, I'll be glad to help you out