TechT
12-19-2008, 05:23 PM
Jump/Flash/Pen/Thumb, etc... Drives are the way a lot of techies are carrying certain software tools these days. Unfortunately, not a lot of vendors have caught on to this trend and most software still has to be installed to a regular PC setup.
I came across an awesome little tool, it goes by the name Universal Extractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract).
I have to admit, I don't know if it was made specifically for what I use it for, but it works great.
You can download it for free by visiting the site.
So anyway, once you have it installed to your PC, you will find that it adds some commands to your right click context menu. If you download an install package, it is usually able to extract it to a "subdir", at least this is the option I always use.
Once it has done its job, you can click on the newly created fold, I usually set mine to the desktop, it is easier to find that way, and find the extracted files.
It seems to separate the files in to folder, one being the actual install package, the other being the {app} folder and then possible some other miscellaneous folders and files.
The folder you want is the {app} folder. I am running portableapps.com suite on my thumb drive, so usually I just rename the {app} folder to the name of the software and then drag and drop it to my portableapps folder on my thumb drive.
After that, I test the software from my drive to see that all the files it needs are in place on the thumb drive. It it checks out, then I am good to go and able to delete all the remnants and downloaded file from my hard drive. After installing and using universal extractor, I did the same process to it, installed it on my thumb drive and then removed it from my PC.
So hopefully this bit of advice will come in handy for some of you...
I came across an awesome little tool, it goes by the name Universal Extractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract).
I have to admit, I don't know if it was made specifically for what I use it for, but it works great.
You can download it for free by visiting the site.
So anyway, once you have it installed to your PC, you will find that it adds some commands to your right click context menu. If you download an install package, it is usually able to extract it to a "subdir", at least this is the option I always use.
Once it has done its job, you can click on the newly created fold, I usually set mine to the desktop, it is easier to find that way, and find the extracted files.
It seems to separate the files in to folder, one being the actual install package, the other being the {app} folder and then possible some other miscellaneous folders and files.
The folder you want is the {app} folder. I am running portableapps.com suite on my thumb drive, so usually I just rename the {app} folder to the name of the software and then drag and drop it to my portableapps folder on my thumb drive.
After that, I test the software from my drive to see that all the files it needs are in place on the thumb drive. It it checks out, then I am good to go and able to delete all the remnants and downloaded file from my hard drive. After installing and using universal extractor, I did the same process to it, installed it on my thumb drive and then removed it from my PC.
So hopefully this bit of advice will come in handy for some of you...