Good day,
Quick question. Does PortableApps.com make any changes to my OS during use? I'm runngin Windows 7 Home Premium on a Dell Studio 17. I'd like to try a lot of the software in PortableApps.com without messing my system up.
Thanks,
Michael
New: NAPS2 (Feb 24, 2025), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, 2024)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
No Ads!, Please donate today
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on BlueSky
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on Twitter
Many portable apps will temporarily store some information on your local C:\ drive during use. These files will vary. Firefox will temporarily create a couple blank directories (which are removed on close). Audacity will use the TEMP directory for its working files (which are removed on close). 7-Zip will temporarily store its settings in the registry (which are removed on close and your local 7-Zip's settings, if any, are restored, even if 7-Zip Portable crashes).
But nothing of that nature is left behind permanently. That's part of the PortableApps.com Format Specification and a requirement for an app to be listed on this site.
Note that all portable apps may cause Windows to create prefetch files or a registry entry noting that they were run. This is normal and unavoidable. And these bits can only be deleted by an admin, not a standard user.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
The part of your reply where you mention changes to the registry is what I was getting at. If I use Firefox, will it make changes to my Registry that will cause my system to slow down? That's why I haven't installed Firefox, or any of these other softwares, yet. I don't want to compromise my system's performance.
Also, I don't know what preftech files are. If Firefox creates these files when I use it, will they slow my system down?
Thanks,
Michael
None of them will make permanent changes to slow anything down on your PC. That's why they're portable.
Every single app you run whether installed or not, Windows will create a prefetch file for. This is by design. Prefetch files are designed so that an app will start faster the 2nd, 3rd, etc time you run it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!