Downloading a program with dependencies to a USB stick

gordon99 · 03 Sep 2022

My laptop O/S is Windows 10 Pro. I wish to send a copy of a free bridge scoring program on a USB stick to a colleague. Each time I try, the program downloads to the memory stick ok except that it omits to include a number of dependency files which are , as far as I'm aware, all in SysWOW64. I have also tried downloading a fresh copy of the program from the web to a USB stick, but again, the dependent files do not load to the stick. To be sure the dependencies were, in fact, downloading with the program, I deleted one (a .ocx file) from SysWOW64 on the laptop. Sure enough, the deleted file had returned to SysWOW64 on downloading the program to the USB stick. So it seems the dependent files go straight the laptop and not to the stick.
Am I attempting to do the impossible or is there a straightforward solution to getting the program with dependencies to load to the memory stick? Advice would be appreciated even if to tell me I am attempting the impossible.

Try3 · 03 Sep 2022

Gordon,

gordon99 said:

Advice would be appreciated even if to tell me I am attempting the impossible.

You are attempting the ~~impossible~~ very difficult.

The installation file for the application is the thing that you need to put on the USB stick & send to your colleague.
The installation file is how you got the application on your computer in the first place.
Some applications have deliberately been put together as "portable applications" and they can simply be copied to, for example, a USB stick. But it takes a great deal of technical skill & specialist resources to construct a portable version of an application that had not been written as portable in the first place. That is, in effect, what you have just been trying to do.

Running the installation file will create all the necessary dependent files, register such things as .ocx files & create the necessary Registry keys.

All the best,
Denis

Paul Black · 03 Sep 2022

Hello @gordon99,

EVERYTHING that is needed to install the program successfully is contained in the .exe file, there is NO need for it to be amended / changed in any way.

I hope this helps.

dalchina · 03 Sep 2022

Can you provide a URL for the program so we can see what you're dealing with?

What you would download to install would normally be a single file e.g. zip, exe, msi....
Sometimes programs require additional support, perhaps java, VC++ runtime... is that perhaps what you mean by 'dependencies'? You would normally only be aware of those when running the installer.

Please confirm you are only downloading the installer, not also trying to install it on the USB stick.

You can see there are numerous unknowns - lack of clarity.. or perhaps my poor guesswork.

gordon99 · 04 Sep 2022

Thank you Denis, Paul and Dalchina for your helpful replies which I appreciate.
The site from which I downloaded the program is pairsscorer.software.informer.com/ - It is a bridge scoring program used as a scoring software for many tournaments.
The program comes in a zip folder. I found that Winzip would not extract the program but 7-zip did.
I may have tried to put the unzipped program onto the USB stick rather than the zipped program. I will look at that again. I did not try to run the program on the stick, at least that was not my intention. I did learn the procedure to load and register the .ocx files into the SysWOW64 folder in the process so that at least has been useful.
Regards, Gordon

Paul Black · 04 Sep 2022

Hello @gordon99,

I have just watched the video, WOW, that is an impressive bit of software. I also looked at the comments for you but there wasn't much to go on unfortunately.

EVERYTHING that is needed to install and run the program successfully will definitely be included in the .exe file. There is obviously going to be a learning curve to becoming proficient with the software.

What you could do, is create a System Image and then install the software. That way, if things do NOT go according to plan, you can just restore the System Image.

I always use 7-Zip for compressed files and I have always found it to be excellent and trustworthy.

You will obviously need to extract the files and install the software on your computer.

I hope this helps.

Paul Black · 04 Sep 2022

Hello @gordon99,

I just did some investigating for you and found these which might help you become familiar with the software . . .

> Part 1 - EBUScore Pairs Scoring Demonstration - Preliminaries
> Part 2 - EBUScore Pairs Scoring Demonstration - Multi section events
> Part 3 - EBUScore Pairs Scoring - Results and uploading

I hope this helps.

Try3 · 04 Sep 2022

Gordon,

You can copy the zip file to the USB then your colleague can run the .exe within it just as you did.
Alternatively, since you have extracted the .exe file from the zip already, you can copy the .exe file to the USB then your colleague can run the .exe just as you did.
Or you could give your colleague the same website address you gave us so they could download & install it themselves.

gordon99 said:

I found that Winzip would not extract the program but 7-zip did.

My WinZip extracted the program without any bother.

All the best,
Denis

gordon99 · 04 Sep 2022

Thanks again Denis and Paul, I am grateful for your assistance. I have an old version of the program which I copied to the colleague on a memory stick. When he could not get this to work (he has a brand new P.C with Windows 11) I suggested he downloaded the newer version of the program which is called now EBUPairsScorer. He seemed to have had difficulty with this so I downloaded the new version onto my own PC where it works OK. I will try downloading downloading the program once more and copying the zip file to the USB and see if that helps him.