First, download the Portable Apps Platform. So here is how to install portable apps to the hard drive. If you install the portable version of VLC, you don't get that feature (although you can still manually set the file associations to do this). If ,for example, you were to install the regular version of VLC player, it will write to the windows registry and associate itself with video files so that you can play a video file in VLC by simply double clicking on the video file.

But the one caveat is that because they don't write to the windows registry, they don't integrate with windows. You can install them to your hard drive and use them like any other program. If you want to uninstall the program, you simply delete the folder on the drive.īut you don't have to install portable apps to a USB flash drive. The installation program simply copies the program, and its associated files, to a folder on the drive without making any changes to the windows registry. Portable apps are designed to be installed to a USB flash drive, that you can move from machine to machine. Okay, maybe that's not a secret, but here is a workaround. Eventually, you have to reinstall windows and reinstall your programs to get the speed back.

When you uninstall a program, it usually leaves some data behind in the database.

The more data you write to the database, the longer it takes to do database lookups. When you install a program, it writes data to the windows registry. The dirty little secret about windows is that the more programs you install, the slower it runs.

Portable software