[daemin]

It allows you to install applications from any source, not only the official store.

It allows for a variety of installers to exist with different features for different use cases.

It allows you to install the application in any location you choose.

It allows for portable installations and to run software just copied from other sources.

[damentz]

What is "it"?

[daemin]

Special installers / uninstallers and also the ability to install and run things outside the official OS store.

[j16sdiz]

Many program can run as standalone .exe, or just unzip as a folder.

All the points you list does not need _Special_ installers / uninstaller.

[daemin]

Yes, that is what I mean by my last point: "It allows for portable installations and to run software just copied from other sources." You can think of decompressing from an archive as running a very simple installation program.

If the only installer available was one provided by the OS how long do you think it would take to make that the only way to install and run software. These things are being done right now on many platforms in the name of safety, security, and to a lesser extent convenience.

The more phone-like a platform is the fewer ways you have to install and run software on it. So far general purpose computers still allow you to install software in other ways than the built-in method (i.e. just unzip and place in a directory), but it's getting increasingly common to require executables be signed, and things are always moving to be more and more locked down.

Now the use of "Special" installers/uninstallers is from the original comment, I would just refer to them as "regular" installers/uninstallers. I do like the ability and freedom to have an ecosystem of these things, as I don't want the one OS method to be the only way to install applications.

[devnullbrain]

>If the only installer available was one provided by the OS

There's the non-sequitur. OP never said that this is what should happen. It is strange to leap to this assumption while also wanting to define portable programs and archives as 'installers'.

In the context of Windows, 'special' installers means the programs you run to be able to use a different program that don't appear on other OSes.

[daemin]

I did not define portable programs and archive extractors as installers, just suggested the act of decompressing to a directory or copying to a directory would be considered as installing the program.

[remram]

I guess "special installers/uninstallers"

[hilbert42]

In principle I have no objection with those options as I've had to use all of them given the nature of the Windows ecosystem.

The trouble is that MS never paid much attention to tracking and cleaning up after installations or after uninstallers has finished. Often this doesn't matter but when something seriously goes wrong untangling the mess can be almost impossible, it's often easier to reinstall Windows and usually much quicker (that's if one has a simple installation).

Unfortunately, my installations aren't simple so I take snapshots at various stages of the installion—stage-1 raw install with all drivers, stage-2 essential utilities, and so on. By stage-4, I have a basic working system with most of my programs. Come the inevitable Windows stuff-up I reinstall from a backup image, it's much quicker than starting from scratch.

Between those major backups, I use the registry backup utility ERUNT, it not only takes registry snapshots on demand but also automatically backs up the registry on a daily basis. This, I'd venture, is the most important utility I've ever put on a Windows computer, I cannot recall how many times it's gotten me out of trouble.

Just several days ago I had a problem reinstalling an update to a corrupted Java jre/runtime. Nothing I did would make the installer install as the earlier installation was not fully uninstalled, thus log files etc. weren't a help.

In the end I had to delete the program dir and other Java files I could find, same with registry entries. As expected, this didn't work, as I hadn't found everything.

Knowing the previous version number of Java I did a string search across the OS and found another half dozen or so Java files. Retried the install again and it still failed. I then ran ERUNT which replaced the registry with an earlier pre-Java one and the install now worked. This still meant that some programs that were added later, LibreOffice for example, had to be reinstalled to update the registry.

If I hadn't had ERUNT installed I'd have had to go back to reinstalling an earlier partition backup. And if I'd not had those then I'd have been in real trouble.

That's the short version. Fact is, Windows is an unmitigated mess when it comes to installations. Why can't I force an installer to complete even with faults? Why doesn't Windows remember exactly what happens during an installation so it can be easily undone?

_

Edit: if you've never used ERUNT and decide to do so, always ensure you shut Windows down and restart it after installing a backup registry before you do anything else—that's in addition to the mandatory reboot required to install the backup.

You may have multiple registry backups and decide the version you've just loaded wasn't the one you want. Loading another without this additional reboot [refresh] will blue-screen the O/S. You'll then have to install the backup manually and that's very messy.