can any program be added to a flash drive like a home accounting program including the files that go with it?

Answer 1

A flash drive will hold as much information as it has the capacity to.

For Example : If you have a 1-gig flash drive and know for a fact that the program you want to put on it (and all it's files and extensions) take up less than 1-gig of space then yes it will fit on the drive just fine.

A flash drive functions much in the same way as your computer's hard drive. Don't be fooled by it's petite size and streamlined nature, it's a powerful piece of data-storage if you buy the right ones.

Answer 2

Depends on your OS and such. On Linux usually not a problem at all. Most Linux apps install completely to a single dir. On windoze the problem is the registry. Most apps save critical settings and info to the registry. So even if you install on both machines with identical information the out of synch issues with the registry will potentially cause you hassles. Good software eschew's the registry for this and registry corruption issues. Few comercial programs do not use the registry any more.

The temp dir might also be a critical problem. If the software does not allow you to specify where to put temp/backup files and data files you may find out that all your edits are lost when switching machines and get inconsistant results.

So probably no you cannot. Depends on whether the software you wish to run uses the registry and what it uses it for. My advice would be to attempt it. If it fails because of registry issues then try installing exactly the same way on all machines you wish to use it from. Then try it. If it still fails your out of luck because the software is using the registry to track things like state, encryption keys and other temporal specific issues.

That or you can switch to Linux and not bother with the registry and comercial software. Life is much easier under Linux most of the time.

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Side note. To get around the potential missing files err messages you can use a 2nd thumb drive with a dummy installation to keep the machine without your primary thumb drive happy.

Answer 3

Yes it can, but thee problem is a lot of programs will add changes to your Registry when you install then next time you boot without the flash drive in the computer it may caus trouble as the computer would be looknig for the drive and not find it when it's expectiong to. So yes you can install programs to a flash drive, but they may not work from computer to computer and could cause trouble for the originating machine and any second machines would not have the registry info on the first machine so may not run your program anyway.

Answer 4

YES!