On the Windows platform, most large applications come with their own installer which sets up folders under C:\Program Files
, possibly some other places, and perhaps adding some registry keys, etc.
But there's still quite a few tools around that consist of just an .exe
or maybe also a README
and a .dll
or two.
How should I install such tools? Directly in C:\Program Files
? All in one subfolder under C:\Program Files
? Somewhere under C:\Users\Me
? Somewhere totally different?
Or maybe different approaches for the tools with just an .exe
to those that also have other files, or maybe only the ones with .dll
s need to be treated differenty ...
Is there any standard accepted way to do this? A "best practice"? If the answer depends on the Windows version, I'm using Windows 7.
In particular, what might strike people as the obvious answer seems to have a catch:
I had tried to manually create new subfolders under C:\Program Files
. In fact I thought I had done so before, but Windows puts up a dialog Destination Folder Access Denied. This caused me to think twice rather than just blindly click Continue.
On the assumption that greater minds than mine have come up against this many times over the years I'd like to ask the community if some kind of "best practice" has come to be accepted.
C:\Program Files
or elsewhere and I provide info on a potential barrier toC:\Program Files
being an obvious solution.