PuTTY Portable Support

Many of the most common issues that arise when using PuTTY Portable are addressed here. Please read through the various topics to see if any of them address your question. You can also post a question in the PuTTY Portable Support Forum.

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PuTTY Portable-Specific Issues

General PuTTY Issues

Installing PuTTY Portable

To install PuTTY Portable, just download the portable package at the top of the PuTTY Portable page and then double-click it. Select the location you wish to install to and click OK. A PuTTYPortable directory will be created there and all the necessary files installed. That's all there is to it.

Using PuTTY Portable

To start up PuTTY Portable, just double-click PuTTYPortable.exe file where you installed PuTTY Portable on your portable drive. Then, use it just like you would a local copy of PuTTY. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:

  • Stay Safe - When using portable apps, it's always a good idea to practice Safe Portable App-ing.
  • Removing Your Drive - When you're done, exit PuTTY and then wait for the activity light on your removable drive to stop flashing. Then select the 'Safely remove [device]' option from the icon in the system tray. If you remove the drive while it is writing, you may lose data.

Upgrading PuTTY Portable

To upgrade to a newer version of PuTTY Portable, just download a new copy and unzip it to your portable drive, right over the previous version. Your settings will not be altered.

Running from a CD (PuTTY Portable Live)

Support for running from a CD is built into PuTTY Portable. Just extract it to a local drive and run it at least once to generate a set of default settings. Next, make any configuration changes you'd like. Finally, burn the whole PuTTYPortable directory to CD being sure not to change the locations of any files.

Known Issues

The following are known issues with this package:

  • Local Copy Exclusion - PuTTY Portable will not run at the same time as a locally installed copy of PuTTY. The launcher will check for this.

Modifications

I made some modifications to the default version of PuTTY to make it more USB key friendly (decreasing total install size and the number of writes to the drive, which will increase drive life). These changes are listed here so you'll know what they are, and so you can recreate the process, if so desired.

  • Friendly Launcher - PuTTY Portable launcher is included. It automatically handles your registry settings.
  • EXE Compressed -The PuTTY EXE was recompressed using UPX. The options used were: --best --compress-icons=0 --nrv2d --crp-ms=999999 -k

Version History

  • 0.59 Revision 2 - March 2, 2007
    • Fixed a bug where PuTTY Portable would forget its settings when PuTTY wasn't installed locally
  • 0.59 - March 1, 2007
    • First general release