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I have Quark XPress 9, and want to make it portable for my own personal use.

It will not be distributed, only used by myself to create PDFs for manuals. (I use it for other purposes, but creating manuals and books are the main reasons).

How would I do this with an existing install I have WITHOUT re-installing the software, and what's the best solution for this?

The software's installed on Windows 7, but would this be copyright infringement (not that I'm ever going to distribute it) or is this a bad idea?

Obviously installation of new software isn't permitted on corporate machines, but people are permitted to use USB sticks.

What's the best way to do this without re-installation, and what software does portable software the best? Ideally it shouldn't have to write to the registry, or if it does, a virtual registry [which is a file, I think, isn't it - not being that familiar with portable apps creation].

Did look on Google but haven't found anything at a beginner level on portable apps.

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3 Answers

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VMware ThinApp will do exactly this.

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Thanks. However, does anyone know of any freeware solutions, and how do I do this without re-installing my software? – userjdoe161851 Jul 13 '11 at 12:08
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If the software has not been written to allow it (QuarkXPress does not fall into this category but there seem to be hacks to make it work) and you don't have any level of virtualization to rely on, you can't. If you can rely on being able to run virtual machines, your chances are better.

If you already have an install, it is "bound" to your system's configuration by a vast number of settings, generated IDs and paths, so your best bet would be the virtualization of your entire operating system into something like VMWare Player/Workstation or VirtualPC.

Techniques like VMWare's ThinApp or Microsoft's SoftGrid/App-V would require something called "sequencing" where everything an installer does is recorded - but for this you would require a clean installation process in the first place and the appropriate ThinApp/App-V component installed on your "corporate machines" as well.

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I do have VirtualBox on my system - not sure how to copy the entire Windows 7 across? – userjdoe161851 Jul 13 '11 at 12:13
@user - You would need to install Quark within a VM that's running in VirtualBox. Then you'd move that entire VM image between whatever machines you want to run the application on. – ErikA Jul 13 '11 at 12:17
I am not familiar with VirtualBox' utilities, but there seem to be P2V walkthroughs (P2V is an acronym for "physical to virtual" - exactly what you would need to do) in the documentation. – syneticon-dj Jul 13 '11 at 12:17
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Altiris SVS does exactly what you require but you do have to perform an installation (or manually work out it's various hooks into your system). It sandboxes almost any application into its own area, even if that application things it's writing to a particular disk or registry location, it's all silently redirected by SVS. Quite clever.

The app should still be available for free here: http://download.cnet.com/Software-Virtualization-Solution-SVS/3000-2651_4-10516806.html

I believe it was acquired by Symantec and current versions may not have free editions available. But the previous free releases should do the job.

Edit: Possible free current version here: http://www.altiris.com/Download/svsPersonal.aspx

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