I’ve been playing around a little recently with Thinstall (which was recently acquired by VMware). Basically it will take an application and turn it into a self-contained single EXE that doesn’t require an install.
It’s extremely easy to use, I setup a fresh install of XP in VMware Workstation, created a snapshot then you run the setup capture program. It will do a pre-install scan as shown below.
At this point (below) the scan is complete, and you leave this window up and install your application.
I am installing a trial version of SecureCRT which I use quite a bit for SSH connections.
After you run the post-install scan if should find the new EXE, click Continue.
It It will save the output to the Thinstall\Captures directory, run the build.bat file located in there to build the app.
Output after running the build.bat file:
As you can see below, after I ran build.bat I uninstalled SecureCRT
The single EXE is in the Thinstall\Captures\<software name>\bin folder
Execute the EXE to run the program on whatever machine you like with no install.
If you make a lot of these, I’ve found it is nice setting a snapshot right after XP is installed, then I revert back after each app I create.
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