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Similar questions have been asked on this forum, but not identical, so I am sorry if this is a bit redundant.

I have made a "portable" application. I used WINRar to create an SFX self-extracting archive. You double-click the .exe, it extracts all files (~600 MB) to a working folder in the current directory, and then automatically executes the program.

Only problem is it takes about 5-8 minutes to extract the first time, then about 20 seconds every subsequent time for the executable to find out all the files are already extracted (i.e. it does quite a bit of work to find out all the work it does not need to do). I know portables can be made much better than this.

So my question: is it possible to extract only the main program's executable and its most-used files (~13 MB) to a working folder in the current directory, then point that executable to whatever files it need which are still within the SFX archive? Or for that matter, operate entirely from the SFX archive? If I just use the "store" option when building the SFX archive, the files shouldn't even need to be decompressed first, correct? So all the files are there, I just don't know how to access them without taking 8 minutes to copy them from an uncompressed archive to an uncompressed folder. Using files directly from the uncompressed SFX archive shouldn't even slow the program down, should it? Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thank you!

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Nevermind. I found a program called Cameyo that can do all of this for me. Thank you!

EDIT: pardon me, here are the details. Cameyo is a free program (itself portable) that lets you capture an install of any software and turn that software into a portable program. Cameyo likes to run in a fresh virtual machine (clean registry, no background noise), so I booted up an existing Windows XP machine on VMWare, captured the installation of my software, and Cameyo built a portable for me. Cameyo's portable extracts a minimum of files into a working folder and runs the rest of the program directly from the SFX archive with no lag. I am still not sure how to do this with WINRar, if it can even be done, without extracting the entire executable contents.

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    This does not provide an answer to the question. This should probably be a comment on the question - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post. Or, you could upgrade this to be a proper answer by describing this "Cameyo" program, saying what it does and how it solves your problem. (Include information on where to get it.)
    – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
    Apr 5, 2015 at 6:19
  • @G-Man, this answer is posted by OP so it is his answer ti to the question
    – Art Gertner
    Apr 5, 2015 at 19:03
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    Its still not a great answer so... I think the latter part of the comment is still valid. How would cameyo solve the problem? (I know what cameyo is, and how it works, and it solves the underlying issue, but the average person may not)
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Apr 6, 2015 at 0:43

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