The Create Portable Installation item in the Help menu makes it easy to create a portable copy of EditPad Pro on a removable disk, USB stick or flash memory card. You can run EditPad off the removable device on any computer, without leaving any traces of EditPad on that computer.
If the capacity of the device you want to install EditPad onto is limited, you can choose not to install certain parts of EditPad on the device. The only part that is not optional is the “main application” part, which is EditPad itself. You can select if you want to copy over the help file, the syntax coloring schemes, and the file navigation schemes. If you installed one or more spell checker dictionaries, you can choose which ones you want to make available on the device.
Note that the Create Portable Installation command will not delete any files from the device. If you use the Create Portable Installation command a second time, and select fewer parts than the first time, EditPad will not remove the deselected parts from the device.
EditPad will show you the complete list of devices that Windows reports as removable devices. External hard disks often report themselves as being hard disks rather than being removable devices. If you want to install EditPad in a portable manner on such a device, turn on the option to treat all drives as removable drives. EditPad will then create a file RemovableDrive.sys on the destination drive. This file act as a token to tell EditPad not to touch the host computer.
To proceed with the installation, click on the device you want to install onto, and click the Install button. The label showing the amount of disk space needed will indicate the parts being copied to the removable drive. Once the operation is complete, the Install onto Removable Drive screen will close automatically.
EditPad will copy itself to a fixed EditPadLite8 or EditPadPro8 subfolder off the root on the device. If you like more complex folder structures, you can move the complete EditPadLite8 or EditPadPro8 folder into a different parent folder on the device.
If you have not yet installed EditPad Pro onto your hard disk, you can create a portable installation by running EditPad’s installer. On the welcome screen, click the Portable Installation button. Follow the steps. This method works even if you do not have the necessary permissions to install software onto the computer you’re using.
If you run the installer on 32-bit Windows the portable install will be 32-bit. It will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. If you run the installer on 64-bit Windows, then the portable install will be 64-bit. It will only work on 64-bit Windows. You can pass the /32 command line parameter to the installer to force it to create a 32-bit installation on 64-bit Windows.
Portable installs are designed to not leave any trace on the host PC, other than files that you explicitly save to the host PC. All settings and history are stored in the same folder as EditPad itself.
This means that a few of EditPad’s features are disabled in portable installs. The Preferences dialog does not have its Shortcuts page. In the Configure File Types dialog, on the Definition page, the buttons to create and remove file associations are disabled.
When you connect a portable drive to different PCs, it may be assigned different drive letters on those PCs. A portable install of EditPad automatically handles a change of drive letter each time you run it. All file paths in your settings and history are automatically updated to the new drive letter when you start EditPad. So when saving files, configuring tools, or changing other settings that refer to files, simply use absolute paths using your portable drive’s current drive letter to refer to tools or files on that drive.